Word: starrs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...addition to his mail-order work (that's what he does all day,, when he's sitting at that desk), Mr. Starr does a thriving off-the-street business. That accounts for about half his sales, he estimates. For forty years Harvard students have bought his books. Bate, Alfred, Perry Miller--they were all his customers as undergraduates. He remarks that students used to buy more books than they do now-- "not what they needed in their courses, just what they wanted to own." He gets a lot of outsiders, too, many of them attracted by the unusual building. During...
...Starr has taught himself to be an expert on rare and expensive books. "Everything you learn is by mistakes that you make," he says. "I could write a book on the things I've given away at low prices." He tells one story about the time his brother sold a William Blake book to a Harvard student. Inside was a piece of paper that said simply. "There will be a sale of William Blake prints on Wednesday." "Can I keep this?" asked the student, and his brother said, "Sure." The piece of paper, which had a watermark date...
Another time, Mr. Starr sold a first edition of Emerson's early poems to a New York dealer for $75. He thought he was getting a pretty good price, since the auction listings had that edition priced at about $50. But the dealer sold the book to another dealer for $600, and he turned around and sold it to Harvard for $2000. "That's because it was a presentation copy to Henry Ware," says Mr. Starr. "He was Emerson's minister, and he almost convinced Emerson to go into the ministry." Mr. Starr is full of biographical information about American...
...thing Mr. Starr really likes about the business is that he never knows what new bargains he's going to find from day to day, or where he's going to find them. Somebody just calls up from an estate or library sale, and he goes out to take a look. One day he went to a sale at the Roxbury annex of the Boston Public Library. When he came back he told his brother, "I bought 30,000 books, and I bought the building, too." "Are you crazy?" said his brother. The building was the Fellows Athenaeum, where Edward...
...where it is. "A history of music by Lang?" asks one woman. "I used to have a few but I sold them," he says. "Do you have anything on horses?" says a young man. "Downstairs, all the way to the back and to your left," Mr. Starr answers. Does he know where every book is? "Of course." How does he remember? "You have to have a good memory in this business...