Book finds

[LW]

I did a small excursion to a couple of old books stores on Saturday. One of the books that I grabbed was Iivar Kemppinen's []Haudantakainen elämä[/i], ("Life Beyond Grave"), a scientific study on religious beliefs on death of old pagan Karelians. It was in a bargain bin and cost 10 euros. and it is in excellent condition.

Today I happened to stumble on the very same book on the lists of a internet bookstore. It was listed as being in "good" condition and it cost 60 euros.

But that is not the most underpriced used book that I've bought. I once bought one volume of the 70s-era comic-book version of the Lord of the Rings. I can't remember anymore how much it cost, but it was about 10 FIM (less than 2 euros in modern money). Last autumn I happened to stumble upon the same book at a book fair. Its price tag read 75 euros or thereabouts. Sure, it is likely that its value has increased during the intervening years, but I believe that I still got it by about 1/10 of going price.

 

[Beady]

The king of all our finds was when the wife rescued an inscribed copy of a Robert Benchley book (for some reason I can't remember the title, right now) from a Salvation Army dumpster. It's now in the Smithsonian.

Then there's the autographed 1st edition of Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire" that we found for $2.50 and sold for $350.

I've got a few others that I've picked up here and there for less than $10, that seem to go on eBay for $75 to $100.

 

[LW]

Then there's the autographed 1st edition of Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire" that we found for $2.50 and sold for $350.

This brought to my mind one find from last autumn. I bought Toivo Pöysä's Pontikka ("Moonshine") that is a history of distilled alcohol in Finland. The book is by itself very interesting, but the inscription on the title page is more so. It is written with very bad handwriting, but the beginning is clear where it reads: "Rauni-Leenalle (asiantuntijalle ... )" which translates to "To Rauni-Leena (an expert on the subject ... )"

The interest factor comes from the fact that while "Rauni" and "Leena" are both common Finnish woman's names, the hyphenated combination is not. In fact, the database of all Finnish given names do not contain a single instance of "Rauni-Leena" (There are 7460 Raunis and 57894 Leenas).

However, there is one very well known woman with that name who is nowadays Norwegian: Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, a ufologist and a conspiracy theorist, who has written among other stuff an article on Microwave Mind Control.

So, it is possible that my bookshelf now contains a book that once belonged to one of the all-time greatest kooks in Finland.