What Treasures Are in Your Attic?

It is all too easy to let keepsakes pile up in the attic or the basement. Grandma's hand-sewn aprons, a movie poster from Mom and Dad's first date, someone's baby shoes from decades ago. What happens to these when they are left to the next of kin? Even after the important keepsakes have been set aside, there is often still an assortment of special items waiting to be liquidated, items that aren't necessary to the owners but seem too valuable to just throw away or even sell at just a garage sale. Estate auctions can help new owners deal with the overwhelming task of pricing and selling these items.

A number of companies are in the market to appraise and auction off these belongings. They are easy to find, online or in the yellow pages, and many have records to show how successful they have been in the past. But there is one category of antiques that is all too often overlooked: books. Collectors seeking out books and ephemera—paper items originally intended to be discarded, like pamphlets, tickets, or posters—are willing to pay a high price for rare copies of these items, but owners have to know how to reach would-be buyers.

Recognizing book values is very challenging: different publishers have different ways of noting first editions, and it takes years of experience to distinguish minute details. One small misprint on page 7 of a Virginia Woolf book could be a $1,000 difference in the selling price. A copy of Vladmir Nabokov's Pale Fire published by Arion Press in a limited edition of 226 books could sell for over $4,000. Books like these can be hidden at the bottom of boxes filled with more common, less costly books.

That is exactly where a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon was found in an attic in upstate New York three years ago. This now 180-year-old original, almost unnoticeable in a cluttered attic, was auctioned for $105,600. Only about 500 first edition prints of the Book of Mormon exist today out of the original 5,000 printed in 1830 in Palmyra, New York, the hometown of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. Smith is said to have received plates from an angel to translate the text into English while he was living in Palmyra. The owner of the book at first claimed not to have remembered that he owned it at all, a New York Times article on the auction said[1]. After being told more about the book, he said he remembered buying it when he was a teenager and had been looking for it. The auction was largely off-site, with six bidders on the phone and five absentee bidders who had previously placed a maximum bid. Many present came only to be able to see the highly coveted book in person.

Collections of letters also bring in buyers' interest. A series of approximately 500 letters dating from 1808-1901 and featuring Reverend William Salt sold for over $3,000 at an auction held by National Book Auctions in August. The letters included correspondence between Salt, a well-respected Catholic priest at Seton Hall University, and the Vatican; letters from Arkansas when the Civil War broke out; and some discussion between Salt and his sister of the Emancipation Proclamation, the first motion in the 1860s to free the slaves of the United States. The letters follow Salt's life closely and give a rare personal insight into historical events. At the same auction gallery in Ithaca, NY, a copy of "The Woman's Bible" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an early figure in woman's rights, sold for $4,500. This unassuming book could have easily been lost among larger, seemingly more valuable, volumes.

Unexpectedly detailed volumes of history like Salt's letters, or the Cady Stanton book, exist in estates all over the country. In upstate New York, for example, many of the large houses were built during the settling of the Erie Canal. The completed construction of the Erie Canal in 1825 allowed for the first all-water transportation between New York City and the Great Lakes—a development that cut costs of transportation drastically. Booming trade in the area caused population and wealth to spike in western New York.

Though the canal isn't used for trade today, the estates built as a result of its economic stimulation remain all along the canalway. These estates house libraries filled with rare collected books, papers documenting the change brought about by the opening of the passage to the western interior, canal passenger lists that could shed light on genealogies of immigrant families, and countless other pieces of history.

Not only large houses owned by wealthy families contain important memorabilia, though. A number of present-day collectibles cost little or nothing when they were first acquired. Coins and stamps are common examples of age adding value. An extreme example, the double-die penny produced with a faulty die in 1955 is now worth close to $1,000. Unused stamps from the 19th century can cost as much as $10,000. Many posters and pamphlets handed out for free are now hot collectors' items. A more modern example of a valuable item is a small pencil sketch by Caldecott-winning children's book illustrator, Maurice Sendak, which was priced at $4,250 by National Book Auctions. In this instance, and many other cases, the age or collectible significance of the item is what lends them their value. It's nearly impossible to say what ephemera and collectible paper will be of value in the future; so many households acquire such "antiques" without knowing it.

When estates and historic houses need to be passed on to new heirs, or sold to move into a smaller place, it's hard to know how to manage all of the materials within them. Specialized auction companies have the experience and resources to determine the right price for the collectibles hidden away in an old house, and to find the buyers anywhere in the world that are willing to pay for them. Without an auction company, news of the Book of Mormon found in upstate New York would not have reached all those off-site bidders from across the country.

"Today, books and collectible paper in estates are frequently worth considerable sums of money and it's often difficult to spot the valuable from the mundane," says David Hall, owner and business manager of National Book Auctions, a public auction service located in Central New York. "We have specialized in estates filled with collectible books and ephemera and can sell them through bi-monthly live auctions, augmented with internet-based marketing—reaching a global bidding pool. We are unique in the industry and our specialized service is key to realizing strong market prices for books and collectible paper."

Without this kind of specialization, books and ephemera that could be sold as collectibles might instead end up in a pile of junk. It is not uncommon to find well-stocked home libraries with collectible books spanning decades or even centuries. Knowing the value of these and reaching a broad audience of buyers is nearly impossible without seeking a specialist's help. Specialists have the knowledge to recognize which books are of value, and the tools to advertise sales to thousands of off-site bidders who wouldn't normally hear about auctions in one's home.

Treasured books and ephemera are hidden among belongings in attics and basements everywhere. Owners just have to pull them into the light and ask for help marketing them.