Best second hand book find ever?

Vladd67 said:
I remember helping to run a second hand book stall raising money for the Sealed Knot regiment I was in. I came home with at least three carrier bags full of paperbacks.
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Did you manage to sell any or did you buy them all? :)
 
I still haven't figured out what to identify as THE best. A notable second-hand find for the 14-year-old me was the Ace paperback of ERB's A Fighting Man of Mars, which was probably the first book by this author that I got hold of. I read through 16 of them within a matter of weeks.

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Here's that Ballantine edition of Lilith:
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...and the Ace House on the Borderland that I mentioned. (These are Internet images, not my copies.)
 
Too many to count. I spent my teenage pocket money on used SF, the more lurid the cover the better. Battered old pulps and magazines from the 50s and 60s, unwanted by anyone in the pre- internet age and sold for pennies. I still have all of those and it still gives me great pleasure.

Once in a while I stumble across something really unexpected, which can be delightful. About 5 years ago I found 2 pristine hardback first editions by the poet Vernon Watkins in a dusty corner of a Salvation Army shop in Swansea, next door to the building Watkins had worked in up to his death nearly 50 years earlier. No one had appreciated their significance. Lovely books, worth a little bit more than the fiver I paid, but that was not really the point.
 
Extollager said:
I still haven't figured out what to identify as THE best. A notable second-hand find for the 14-year-old me was the Ace paperback of ERB's A Fighting Man of Mars, which was probably the first book by this author that I got hold of. I read through 16 of them within a matter of weeks.

View attachment 69833
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Love the cover on this, this is my idea of a classic cover!
 
hitmouse said:
Too many to count. I spent my teenage pocket money on used SF, the more lurid the cover the better. Battered old pulps and magazines from the 50s and 60s, unwanted by anyone in the pre- internet age and sold for pennies. I still have all of those and it still gives me great pleasure.

Once in a while I stumble across something really unexpected, which can be delightful. About 5 years ago I found 2 pristine hardback first editions by the poet Vernon Watkins in a dusty corner of a Salvation Army shop in Swansea, next door to the building Watkins had worked in up to his death nearly 50 years earlier. No one had appreciated their significance. Lovely books, worth a little bit more than the fiver I paid, but that was not really the point.
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I recently found a few japanese novels and books of poetry in a junk store in wales, nearly bit the mans hand of buying them, still havent read them but sometimes you see something and think to yourself, want, want, want!!! :)
 
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I'm going to go with this novel, All Hallows' Eve by Charles Williams, as my best second-hand book find, though I could, I'm sure, choose something else. This Avon paperback, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, was, I think, the first of Williams's novels that I owned -- certainly one of the first -- although I don't have that copy now. Probably I found it at Blue Goose Books in Ashland, Oregon. It is a book I return to often, an outstanding and meaningful story of the supernatural, one of the most impressive works of fiction I've read.

I wrote about Blue Goose here.

 
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I found the official Robin Hood book in an antiques shop, but gave it to my friend because it's more his style.
 
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Extollager said:
View attachment 69850
I'm going to go with this novel, All Hallows' Eve by Charles Williams, as my best second-hand book find, though I could, I'm sure, choose something else. This Avon paperback, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, was, I think, the first of Williams's novels that I owned -- certainly one of the first -- although I don't have that copy now. Probably I found it at Blue Goose Books in Ashland, Oregon. It is a book I return to often, an outstanding and meaningful story of the supernatural, one of the most impressive works of fiction I've read.

I wrote about Blue Goose here.

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Yet again another fine cover although a book I havent heard of before.
 
I got a copy of Dangerous Visions from bookmooch for free. Nothing unusual about that you think but it is signed by Ellison and was from a convention.
 
I had read the Hobbit in grade school and shortly after that I found The Sword of Shannara in a second hand book store. I tore through that book and have been hooked on fantasy since.
 
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