The entire print-run of the first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species sold out on its very first day. If you are lucky enough to own an original, it's worth an awful lot of money.
But imagine how much more valuable your original copy of On the Origin of Species would be if the print-run had been not of 1,250 books, but of just two? Priceless is the word you're looking for. Utterly priceless!
Which got me thinking. There's money to be made here, if one can lay one's hands on the entire print-run of a future classic book on the day that it first comes out.
But how? How does one purchase an entire print-run?
And then it dawned on me! You disintermediate and publish the book yourself:
Happy birthday, Stense! Look after your present: it's one of only two copies in existence.
(We'll both be able to retire on this, mark my words.)
Ther will be a paperback edition for the rest of us at some point, I hope?
So do you have a 1st edition of otOoS to put this first-edition next to on the bookshelf?
sorry - that was me. Cookie trouble I guess.
I wish!
Well, you know what to ask Stense for in return then - a snip at £107K (+£8.77 shipping).
I just found a web site called The Darwin Awards....anything to do with you, sir?
How about 'The wit & wisdom of Richard Carter'?
You'd save a fortune on ink!!!
The Darwin Awards have been going for many years. Nothing to do with me.
You had better hope Stense doesn't change her name between now and the second edition - the re-writes would be ex-Stense-ive!
I'll get my coat.
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
~Hartley Coleridge
True indeed: I have seen her frowns... Lots of them.