Plan ahead.
I have been collecting for over 40 years and have amassed quite a few books in that time. My principle collection is Sherlock Holmes “writings upon the writings” but I have a number of pastiches and parodies as well as many other related items, including magazines and statues, etc. I also collect Arthur Conan Doyle, Vincent Starrett, Jack the Ripper, detective and mystery books, including reference books, and film and television books, particularly concerning westerns. Naturally, there are also a lot of miscellaneous books and magazines. In all, several thousand books and related items.
I often thought about what should eventually happen to me collections. Should I, at some point, sell them or donate them to a library such as that in St. Louis or in Minnesota. I vacillated between the two and then always decided that I wasn’t ready to make that decision. After all, I am only 79 (80 in December). Then a wondrous thing happened. My son Peter developed, at an advanced age, an interest in Sherlock Holmes. Finally I had an estate plan. I would die and Peter would take the books. I was set. I could hold on to them until my dying breath.
Unfortunately things don’t always work out the way we want them to. In my case it was a divorce. My wife decided she wanted a divorce after 33 years of marriage. The first thing we needed to do was sell the house. That meant I had to move all of my books and other collected items. First I found a two bedroom apartment but it would not be available for up to two months, so the decision was made to first move most of the items to Peter’s house and the rest to a storage unit I had to obtain. It only took a couple of weeks to box up everything. I was also informed by Peter that I needed to downsize. As a result, I pulled about 400 books that I was willing to sell. A book dealer from Illinois that I knew came down twice and purchased a disappointingly few books each time. For the rest, Peter put something on Facebook and we ended up selling the rest. Altogether, I received about $2.00 a book.
Little by little, Peter and I moved a number of boxes to his basement. Then he hired three college guys and one morning they moved a total of 182 boxes to Peter’s house and to the storage unit. Not only did the boxes fill up one side of Peter’s basement but also most of his living room. That was step one.
Step two was to move the boxes from Peter’s house to my new apartment when it was ready. This I basically had to do by myself because by this time Peter, a teacher, was back at work. It took several weeks but finally the books were in the apartment. I had moved a number of boxes each day and put them in the bookcases as I did. There wasn’t much order to them because there wasn’t time. That would come after I had moved everything. I should also tell you that both U-Haul, from where I bought all of the boxes, and my chiropractor were getting rich off of me.
Now everything is in the apartment and I am beginning to arrange it all and catastrophe hit. I developed severe pain in my right knee and ended up having surgery on my knee. Everything went well and I hope to get back to arranging my books in a few weeks. In the meantime, I am back to my original estate planning. I am simply not ready to relinquish my books yet, particularly after all I have just gone through. It may have value only to me but that is enough.
However, I do issue this warning to other collectors. Have a plan before you are forced into one.
