Well that's about that. There's a big stack of newer open wheel race car books, a stack of muscle car, a stack of old motorcycle, some Lamborghini, Mercedes, Maserati... I'm beat. Books are heavy.
One book I have always wanted to find was titled Hot Rod . This was in my elementary school,,,,,around 1973 maybe,,,which meant it was probably printed in late 50s,,,early 60s,,,,,,it was hard bound cover . Seems like the cover was just crimson color with words Hot Rod on the front cover . I can’t remember the main characters name,,,,but he was an expert young hot rodder and they were always talking about the “Trenton Run”,,,,and wanting to break a time record on the run. Seems like after several other town kids were killed in a big accident,,,that he decided that speed was dangerous and should try to be careful ? Does this sound like something anyone else has read before? Tommy
Henry Gregor Felsen I believe, I have that book at home. They come up for sale pretty often, a lot were printed.
If my reading comprehension were any better I might be jealous. At any rate you have a great friend there!
His daughter was here a while back, too. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/henry-gregor-felsen-hot-rod.237925/
the car book world has turned upside down with the volume of material presented - Thanks for sharing - too many collections, big and small, have been sent to the land fill
My wife wouldn't like it, but I'd have brought that truckload home too! Would keep me reading, until I couldn't open my eyes anymore. Then the kids could sell them.
Some real interesting ones in that batch and I'd say 99% of them are interesting to someone. Put that Riverside international raceway by Pete Lions in a seriously safe place and look the book up on Amazon. I'm not sure how accurate the prices there are but that is a very collectable book and I'd imagine a good number of the others are highly sought after collectable editions.
Thanks for all the advice guys. He did mention some were expensive and I saw some $300 price tags on Ferrari books. Much as I'd like to built a wall of shelves and read all these in my remaining years, probably not in the cards. I definitely want to read Smokey's book, some of the racing history and tech stuff. I've had a few inquiries on select books, might contact a dealer, we'll see..
Here they are right side up. Uploaded those directly from the camera yesterday as I went, no room to spread them all out together. Don't know why they flipped..
15 years ago, you had a small fortune. Unfortunately, the last 15 years have not been kind to the value of automotive books. Part of the problem was someone (or several someones) donated a large library(s) to the AACA, who just blew out the duplicates for virtually nothing. Some of those books are REALLY interesting (I probably have 3/4 of them in my library, among others, and have read most of them). One of the drivers I really admired when I was a kid was Stirling Moss. I see you have a couple of his there. You might enjoy them. The Page book is worth the read cover to cover on vehicles around 1910. The Tom McCahill book used to bring some money, don't know about today. Kind of surprised there are no Dykes Encyclopedia in the bunch. Really a great opportunity to enjoy a lot of automotive history. Congratulations! Jon.
Nice friend and looks like some nice reads in there ! Funny I'm going thru my old books as well but most suffer from the fire - smoke get's to everything - along with some of my college books - why did I save them ?
Do you have “Unsafe at any speed”? Seriously that is some real neat stuff, but I have decided owning excessive stuff is more of a burden than a good thing. It took me a long tome to get rid of my library.
Can't wait for part 3. Books are heavy. Maybe get some rest first. Speaking of "rest"... I was gonna say that those books would be good to have for when a guy can't get out to the garage anymore. Easy chair... the dog... slippers. Then I realized what I was saying. To heck with that. Sell the books. Fast.
Look like the size of my collection of firearms, Explosives, and Military books I sold for $900 just before I moved here.
Where was I when the AACA sale went down? Dang! I have not seen the nosedive that you have. Fifteen years ago, I was buying car books online quite regularly. The market was split into two categories: Collector's Toys and everything else. Collector's Toys almost always sold at top dollar, usually above list price if it was out of print. Everything else was pretty cheap. I bought four books, including Private Entrant seen in this haul, from England for under $20 including shipping by slow boat mail. I had an eBay search that would show me everything automotive—minus manuals—under $10, and there was a lot of it. Half.com was also cheap. But eBay got rid of Half and made it harder for amateur sellers. They also changed their search function, breaking searches like mine. Average prices on 'everything else' have gone up since. The OP has a lot of Collector's Toys in his haul. I picked one that I would like, Ferrari by Mailander, and did a search on Amazon and eBay. Amazon won't let you search sold items, but it will let you search multiple titles by ISBN in its advanced search (get a bar code scanner app for your phone to grab them). Ferrari by Mailander starts at $249.99. Ebay had one sold for $268, but in England. The only copy currently for sale on eBay, also in England, was $374. Condition matters of course, and smoke or musty odors (almost impossible to remove) drive the price way down. Ex-library copies are also much less valuable.
Try contacting the AACA. Doubt seriously if they sold everything they had. Was either last year or the year before. Jon.
Thanks for the tip. The list is still online, but hasn't been updated since October 2019. At that time, there were still more than 1000 books available, but the prices weren't all that spectacular. They didn't come out and say it, but with the AACA library closed, I suspect that they aren't selling anything right now. They did say that the library is planning a big 'yard sale' at Hershey 2021.
My prices are spectacular! Been out of town and haven't been able to get anything done. Gave a few to friends...
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