Aside from the impressive collection of proverbs, the bulk of the Summer sale will feature quantities of books taken from the larger library. These represent over 4,000 books which were selected from the library of over 100,000. The types of books vary in both age and genre. The majority of the books to be offered in the shelf-lots are 19th century, early 20th century, and some early printed books will also be found in many of the shelf-lots. Nearly all of the smaller groupings of proverbs-related books are pre-1800 printings and many are extremely scarce.
Easton arranged his library with an eye for researching dialect. For example, in the Scottish section of the library, one would find Scottish fiction, poetry, history, folklore, humor, music and also books specifically dealing with dialect. In the Summer sale, many of the books will be grouped by subject or genre, but many will also be grouped as he grouped them: by geographical area. So, a shelf-lot entitled “Wales” would contain fiction, history, dialect, poetry, or books by authors who were from Wales.
Dealers interested in buying the shelf-lots will be most interested in value. Of course, auctions always will offer an excellent value, but it may be helpful for dealers to understand how value is represented in the arrangement of the lots. The smaller the shelf-lot, the greater the per-book value. For example, the sale will begin with groups of 3 to 5 books. These small lots represent very high per-book value; many of these books are incredibly scarce and haven’t seen the market in many decades.
Lots which are larger and vary in size (anywhere from 15 to 80 books) represent excellent value as well. These are not your typical “shelf-lots.” Select items from each of these larger lots will be detailed in the catalogue, and you will find (with minimal research) that these larger lots contain very good value; so don’t be fooled by the larger quantity. Many of these books are quite rare and valuable. The estimates provided for these lots represent approximately 10% to 20% of the retail value based upon current online pricing (i.e. the cheapest copy currently available online, if any others found for sale) for comparable or less-than-comparable copies.
