Speaker 1: It's Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm Deli Leazy, Boston's
Speaker 1: new radio.
Speaker 2: We always on Friday night is week ease you at
Speaker 2: the weekend. We have two hours left and we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking with Ken Gloss in just a moment,
Speaker 2: but I'll remind you that we will do our last
Speaker 2: final Friday of the year before the November election. The
Speaker 2: November election is on November fifth, So as I think
Speaker 2: all of you know for the last now seven months
Speaker 2: and soon this would be the eighth month since last March.
Speaker 2: On the last Friday of the month, sometimes it was
Speaker 2: the thirtieth or the thirty first, other times it was
Speaker 2: the twenty seventh, of the twenty fifth or whatever. And
Speaker 2: tonight it's October twenty fifth. We would have a little poll,
Speaker 2: a little snap poll in that what we call the
Speaker 2: twentieth hour, on who you would be inclined to vote
Speaker 2: for for president. Of course, we started off with the Ames, Trump, Biden,
Speaker 2: and Kennedy. Kennedy has dropped out, as has Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: It is now Trump and Harris and we will do
Speaker 2: our final, our eighth poll during the eleven o'clock hour.
Speaker 2: But before we do that, I'm delighted to have back
Speaker 2: a regular guest in this program, my great friend Ken
Speaker 2: Gloss of the Bradle Bookshop, and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about a couple of book events coming up in Boston
Speaker 2: won this weekend and a bigger one next weekend. And
Speaker 2: also Ken Gloss has always been willing to share with
Speaker 2: us some books or some manuscripts that he has recently
Speaker 2: had his hands on, and he's also willing to give
Speaker 2: you an idea if you have a rare book or
Speaker 2: a rare manuscript in your possession. Ken, welcome back to
Speaker 2: Night Side. How are you, sir?
Speaker 3: I'm fine, and it's a lot of fun to be
Speaker 3: back and talk with you, and looking forward to these
Speaker 3: books events, which of course I'm very involved with. But
Speaker 3: it's just really good talking with you. It always is, well, Ken.
Speaker 2: I think if I could call anyone a bibliophile, it
Speaker 2: would be you. You love books. You've spent your entire life
Speaker 2: surrounded by books, and basically you have made a life
Speaker 2: associated with books. And what a wonderful life you have
Speaker 2: you have had and that you continue to have followed
Speaker 2: in your dad's footsteps the Brattle Bookshop, and many people
Speaker 2: used to get confused you're on West Street, You're not
Speaker 2: on Brattle Street. But I know there was a point
Speaker 2: in time. What is the derivation of the Brattle Bookshop?
Speaker 2: Was it at some point?
Speaker 3: Well, what happened was in nineteen forty nine my parents
Speaker 3: were getting married. The Brattle Bookshop, which actually you can
Speaker 3: trace back to the eighteen twenties, was literally going back
Speaker 3: out of business, and my mother had five hundred dollars
Speaker 3: and with that they bought half interest. Now, the thing
Speaker 3: about Brattle Street, which was where the bookstore was, there
Speaker 3: was a small street in what was Scarley Square of
Speaker 3: Boston called Brattle Street. And to make it even more confusing,
Speaker 3: the street doesn't exist anymore. It's where City Hall Plaza
Speaker 3: is now noticed Scary Square.
Speaker 2: And all the entertainment that ensued there.
Speaker 3: All the entertainment then, very interesting entertainment. I have to
Speaker 3: admit I was way too young to take part. I
Speaker 3: just heard about it all.
Speaker 2: Yes, me too, But no street, the more famous Brattle
Speaker 2: Street in Cambridge.
Speaker 3: Well, what I had to do was in the early
Speaker 3: seventeen hundreds in Boston, We'll go back a few years
Speaker 3: to get the story. There was a very very rich
Speaker 3: merchant named Thomas Braddell. He had some land in Boston,
Speaker 3: and he owned an awful lot of land in Cambridge.
Speaker 3: Thus Brattle Street in Cambridge, and that's where the name
Speaker 3: comes from, a very rich Bostonian in the early seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Wow, that gets us back aways. So for people who
Speaker 2: don't understand that, oftentimes you find your inventory. If you
Speaker 2: want to go find a New York Times current bestseller,
Speaker 2: you probably go to Amazon. You probably go to if
Speaker 2: there are any Barnes and Nobles left bookstores. So that's
Speaker 2: not what you deal in. You deal in books that
Speaker 2: you have bought from families or from estate sales, and
Speaker 2: people go and browse your bookstore like crazy. You're on
Speaker 2: West Street in Boston.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's actually very interesting. One of the things
Speaker 3: that people don't realize about the business. So and they
Speaker 3: picture someone in the book business sitting behind talking with
Speaker 3: people about books, but they don't think of is we
Speaker 3: just moved twenty thousand books out of someone's house in
Speaker 3: one of the Boston suburbs. I was in Connecticut two
Speaker 3: days ago moving about two thousand books. In Maine yesterday
Speaker 3: moving a thousand or more. And it's really a physical
Speaker 3: job too. But it's also it's the hunt. It's the search.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like being Jim Hawkins on Treasure Island,
Speaker 3: never knowing quite what you're going to meet. And most
Speaker 3: people who are interested in books are interesting people. So
Speaker 3: you meet a lot of real characters and fun people
Speaker 3: and brilliant and that's one of the joys of the
Speaker 3: whole business too.
Speaker 2: So give us the name, and we're going to obviously
Speaker 2: talk about these book fairs that are coming up, the
Speaker 2: one this weekend and the one next weekend. And I
Speaker 2: also do want to encourage people if they'd like to
Speaker 2: call in and inquire if they have some manuscript or
Speaker 2: book and that of years past, and they would love
Speaker 2: you to venture an estimatest of with the value of that.
Speaker 3: And you never know, you never know what's been sitting around.
Speaker 3: Because just recently a colleague of mine, I do the
Speaker 3: Antiques bro Show, I've done that for over twenty years,
Speaker 3: but a colleague in North Carolina was at an estate.
Speaker 3: Really nice to say to North Carolina. They were looking
Speaker 3: through furniture that was over two hundred years old. They
Speaker 3: opened up one of the draws. There was a piece
Speaker 3: of paper in the draw. That piece of paper was
Speaker 3: an early, very early printing of the Constitution. It went
Speaker 3: up for auction, and so over nine million dollars. So
Speaker 3: that had been sitting in a probably a piece of
Speaker 3: furniture for two hundred thirty or forty years, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden it was found. And so that can happen.
Speaker 3: It is unusual though, but a lot of it is
Speaker 3: just you know, people have sod.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you. You said, you, colleague, that was
Speaker 2: he in the in the process of buying the furniture,
Speaker 2: or was he at the estate sale and going through
Speaker 2: the home and figuring out what he wanted to purchase.
Speaker 3: No, he wasn't. He was in there as an appraiser.
Speaker 3: Now there was the estate and the lawyers had called
Speaker 3: him in to look through the furniture, look through all
Speaker 3: the objects. He wasn't an expert in books and manuscripts,
Speaker 3: but he was very knowledgeable. So when he spotted it,
Speaker 3: he knew, wait a minute, this is something we've got
Speaker 3: to get people in and really look at. And obviously
Speaker 3: everybody was sort of taken aback and surprised. And you know,
Speaker 3: it still happens.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I'm not mistaken, the number of original
Speaker 2: declarations of independence and constitutions. They pretty much of you know,
Speaker 2: the original documents. They have some I think estimate as
Speaker 2: to how many of those remain in existence. And it's
Speaker 2: it's it's not a big figure in either within either group.
Speaker 3: Correct, it's in the twenties and thirties. The Constitution is
Speaker 3: even rarer. I mean, it's a piece of paper, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's a piece of paper, and it's well over
Speaker 3: two hundred something years old. And the other thing about
Speaker 3: them is a lot of the copies that you hear
Speaker 3: about or can see or view are in institutional library
Speaker 3: state underglass, not only under glass, but you know they're
Speaker 3: never going to come up for sale or be available
Speaker 3: to the public, so you know it's one. So that's
Speaker 3: an extreme example, although I have to admit I one
Speaker 3: time got called in to do an appraisal and I
Speaker 3: wasn't told about what the appraisal was going to be
Speaker 3: ahead of time. I walked in a building basement, folding
Speaker 3: table fluorescent lighting, and there was a copy of the
Speaker 3: Bill of Rights, the Pilgrim chartter and a copy a
Speaker 3: printed copy of the Declaration. But at the top it
Speaker 3: said this is a true and authentic copy in ink,
Speaker 3: signed John Hancock, and I wasn't and I will admit
Speaker 3: I put my little finger on each one of them,
Speaker 3: and I remember putting my finger on a more. Now
Speaker 3: those are in the Massachusetts State Archives at the museum
Speaker 3: near the Kennedy, but I saw them before they ended
Speaker 3: up under glass. And when you talk about thrills, that's
Speaker 3: one of them.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. My guest is Ken Gloss, you'd like to join
Speaker 2: the conversation. We're going to talk about a couple of
Speaker 2: events coming up which are open to the public. Uh.
Speaker 2: And if you are a bibliophile or someone of that interest,
Speaker 2: you you're going to be and you're going to enjoy
Speaker 2: this next hour. I know my friend David Breadnoy, one
Speaker 2: of my predecessors in this this night side at what
Speaker 2: was it was called the David Brudnoy Show at the time,
Speaker 2: but in this time frame at WBZ, was has an
Speaker 2: extraordinary capacity to read and absorb information, and of course
Speaker 2: he was a writer as well as a reader. I'm
Speaker 2: not close to where David Brudnoy was, but I do
Speaker 2: have more than a passing interest in books and a
Speaker 2: friendship with Ken Gloss that goes back many years. He's
Speaker 2: a great guy to deal with. If you have something
Speaker 2: in your possession that you'd like to ask him about,
Speaker 2: feel free to join the conversation At six one, seven, two, five,
Speaker 2: four ten thirty six one seven, nine three one ten
Speaker 2: thirty we get back. We'll talk more with Ken Uh
Speaker 2: and also talk about these two events, one that that
Speaker 2: starts this weekend here in Boston and one that is
Speaker 2: a big, big event next weekend. We'll get to all
Speaker 2: of that. Feel free to participate. Make this a conversation
Speaker 2: that involves you as well. We'll be back on night's
Speaker 2: side with Ken Gloss of the Brattle Bookshop on West
Speaker 2: Street in downtown Boston after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nights six studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: My guest is Ken Gloss to the Bradle Bookshop. So Ken,
Speaker 2: let's talk the event this weekend and the event next weekend.
Speaker 2: Let's start with this weekend. I assume both of these
Speaker 2: are open to the public. There may be an admission charge,
Speaker 2: but let's talk about this weekend first.
Speaker 3: Well, well, first of all, they're both definitely open to
Speaker 3: the public. Matter of fact, we love the public to
Speaker 3: come because those are the people that we've won an
Speaker 3: interest in get reading and collecting and so on. So
Speaker 3: the one this week weekend is called the Boston Book Festival.
Speaker 3: It's mostly new books and a lot of authors centralized
Speaker 3: write in Copley Square. It's free, there's no charge at all.
Speaker 3: We have a booth right in front of the Boston
Speaker 3: Public Library. We're probably the only ones really bringing old
Speaker 3: We wanted to represent the old books and the older items,
Speaker 3: whereas most of the others speakers, thousands of people come.
Speaker 3: Copley Square is humming with literature, young children's authors, major authors,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be a beautiful day. It's outdoors
Speaker 3: and then in a lot of the buildings of churches
Speaker 3: and so.
Speaker 2: On in the area.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, if you're going to be in the
Speaker 3: Boston area, definitely get by Copley Square tomorrow and I'll
Speaker 3: tell you that this fare it's been going for I'm
Speaker 3: not sure fifteen twenty years now, and they've had good
Speaker 3: weather almost every single year. So that's the Heavens is
Speaker 3: saying it's something to go and see, and we will
Speaker 3: be representative there and we're bringing in this fair. We
Speaker 3: don't bring our rare items. We bring general books, some history,
Speaker 3: We bring this year. I think a lot of the
Speaker 3: sort of older nineteen forties and fifties paperbacks with the
Speaker 3: lurid covers and stories more general outdoor pick up a book, geeve,
Speaker 3: you can look and collect. And then what we also
Speaker 3: do is try to encourage a lot of the people
Speaker 3: and new books say hey, there's going to be an
Speaker 3: old and rare book show coming up in a few
Speaker 3: weeks too. So it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So the event tomorrow, it sounds to me like it's
Speaker 2: set up in that park that is really Copley Square,
Speaker 2: but you're not on the on the steps of the
Speaker 2: Public Library, and you're not at the front of the
Speaker 2: complete Plaza hotel. You're in that that public space.
Speaker 3: Correct, well, the public space is being redone right now,
Speaker 3: that big park. So literally we're on the sidewalk in
Speaker 3: front of the Boston Public Library. The old yeah, right
Speaker 3: right on there is where it is it used to
Speaker 3: be in that park, but the park's being renovated.
Speaker 2: And then a lot of the oftentimes Dartmouth Street is
Speaker 2: closed to traffic. It is so is it closed to traffic,
Speaker 2: it will be closed.
Speaker 3: It will be closed to traffic tomorrow. They have I
Speaker 3: think a few food trucks, but then they have a
Speaker 3: lot of lectures that again you can go into the
Speaker 3: churches in the area. And it's just a really fun, light,
Speaker 3: easy event where people are just trying to promote literacy,
Speaker 3: reading and uh and how could we not be at
Speaker 3: some thing that's that's showing books And we've done it
Speaker 3: since it first started and it's a fabulous event.
Speaker 2: So okay, so let's talk about the big event, which
Speaker 2: is the following weekend, Friday, the eight of November through
Speaker 2: Sunday the tenth. That's at the Heinz Convention Center in
Speaker 2: downtown Boston right by they share the Sheridan Boston Hotel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's and that's an event that I think
Speaker 3: it's in the forty seventh or eighth year in Boston.
Speaker 3: The organization is seventy five years old, but it's it's
Speaker 3: about one hundred one hundred plus dealers from all over
Speaker 3: the world, from Europe, some from the Eastern Europe, Great Britain,
Speaker 3: tell then all over the United States. Dealers come and
Speaker 3: they have basically old or rare but almost any area
Speaker 3: of subject that you can think of.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Friday, it's I think from four to eight and there
Speaker 3: is a twenty five dollars admission charge. But I'll tell
Speaker 3: you a secret. If any of you people listening now
Speaker 3: want to go to the Friday night opening, I'll bet
Speaker 3: you if they got in touch with me, I could
Speaker 3: come up with comp tickets for them. I made sure
Speaker 3: to have a bunch.
Speaker 2: Okay, But then you may stop by.
Speaker 3: Or call or email or something, and we'll make sure
Speaker 3: they get them.
Speaker 2: And we'll give that information at the end of the hour,
Speaker 2: so that people have a chance to get a piece
Speaker 2: of paper, a pencil, and we'll give them your email
Speaker 2: or a phone number where they could reach out to
Speaker 2: the bookshop.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and then Saturday and Sunday it's free. There's no
Speaker 3: admission charge because we don't want to discourage people from
Speaker 3: coming in and looking. And a lot of people they
Speaker 3: go to a show like or they hear about it
Speaker 3: and they think it's very erudite and they think that,
Speaker 3: you know how I would we be interested. But it
Speaker 3: covers almost every subject that you can think of, and
Speaker 3: not everything is high priced. Matter of fact, we make
Speaker 3: an effort to have a lot of the dealers to
Speaker 3: have things under one hundred dollars, just so it's a
Speaker 3: little more accessible, matter of fact, to give you an idea.
Speaker 3: And this is when we have some speakers, maybe one
Speaker 3: you know, Dick Johnson over at the Sports Museum. He's
Speaker 3: going to be speaking on Sunday. But one of the
Speaker 3: things that I was saying I'm hoping to get before
Speaker 3: the fair that I thought would interest you. I am
Speaker 3: trying to buy an eighteen nineties photograph of the Boston
Speaker 3: Latin School baseball team.
Speaker 2: But you know I did not play on that team.
Speaker 2: I want you to know that that was before my time.
Speaker 3: Well, I was more likely to root for the team
Speaker 3: when you were there than I was at this one.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: But it's things come in like that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: There will be letters of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, There'll
Speaker 3: be cookbooks signed by Julia Child. One of the things
Speaker 3: I know that I'm bringing is a program from the
Speaker 3: from the nineteen twelve World Series first year at Gunway Park,
Speaker 3: Red Sox win the World Series. Se Yeah, and a
Speaker 3: program from it. Also, I have a promotional brochure for
Speaker 3: Titanic if you want to go on a cruise, I
Speaker 3: don't recommend it, but I have the brochure for it.
Speaker 3: So all of that is there and if someone comes
Speaker 3: in and you know, maybe you're going out Saturday night,
Speaker 3: or you're around Sunday afternoon, maybe you don't want to
Speaker 3: watch the Patriots game or something like that. You can
Speaker 3: come there spend an hour or two. And I think
Speaker 3: most people, if they figure they're going to spend an hour,
Speaker 3: they end up at three to four. And you can
Speaker 3: actually touch these things. Another book that I know someone
Speaker 3: is bringing, let me.
Speaker 2: Ask you that there's a question, ken that I have,
Speaker 2: and that is the how tight is the security at
Speaker 2: this It is the forty sixth Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair,
Speaker 2: and again November eighth to the tenth at the Hinz
Speaker 2: Convention Center, you know, very you know, conveniently located on
Speaker 2: Boylston Street, right, you know, sort of the back of
Speaker 2: the Sheridan Boston Hotel lost the Sheridan Hotel whatever they
Speaker 2: call it these days. How tight is the security when
Speaker 2: some of the documents of the papers that you suggest
Speaker 2: are there, I mean all.
Speaker 3: There worth thousands of dollars and tens of thousands. Well,
Speaker 3: first of all, there is a co check. You can't
Speaker 3: bring bags in. There are security guards checking when you
Speaker 3: leave the you know that you have receipts and so on.
Speaker 3: But each deal has a booth and you have your
Speaker 3: people in the booth.
Speaker 2: You got to you gotta be Obviously, none of my
Speaker 2: audience is going to go there and try to do
Speaker 2: anything illegal. Ken, I'm going to take a very quick
Speaker 2: got to take you a very quick break here because
Speaker 2: because of all of the the activity tonight in the
Speaker 2: Middle East, we're expecting a CBS special news report. My
Speaker 2: guest is Ken Gloss or the Brattle Bookshop. If you
Speaker 2: want to join the conversation, you have the numbers. But
Speaker 2: before we get back to Ken, this is a special
Speaker 2: news report from CBS on the Middle East.
Speaker 1: You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's
Speaker 1: news radio.
Speaker 2: My guest is Ken Glass, Ken Gloss of the Brattle Bookshop,
Speaker 2: and we are talking about a couple of events coming
Speaker 2: up tomorrow and next weekend. The event tomorrow is in
Speaker 2: Copley Square in Boston, uh in front of the Boston
Speaker 2: Public Library that Ken talked about it. And then the
Speaker 2: book fair the forty six is an international into Boston
Speaker 2: International Interquarian Book Fair from November eighth to the tenth.
Speaker 2: Next next weekend at the Hinds Convention Center. Again, Ken
Speaker 2: said that the admission charge tomorrow, there's no admission charge,
Speaker 2: and there is an admission charge to the event on
Speaker 2: Friday night, but there was there's no admission charge for
Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday. But Ken said that he might be
Speaker 2: able to get a few comp tickets. So if you're
Speaker 2: interested for next Friday night, Ken will give it an
Speaker 2: address an email later on during this hour, which will
Speaker 2: which he gets you in there. Ken, before we get
Speaker 2: the phone calls, I have a question, and it's it's
Speaker 2: kind of a general question, but I think you could
Speaker 2: probably answer it. I know that if if there was ever,
Speaker 2: say a book of Abraham Lincoln that had some relationship
Speaker 2: to Lincoln that he signed, or a book signed by
Speaker 2: George Washington, or for that matter, a book signed by
Speaker 2: Franklin Roosevelt, it would be of a gnomeous value. But give
Speaker 2: us an idea if someone wanted to, say, to try
Speaker 2: to build a collection of some books signed by presidents.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about again the Superstar Press. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about a Franklin Pierce, Martin van Buren, Rutherford B. Hayes,
Speaker 2: or something like that. I'm in many of those books
Speaker 2: from the presidents of the nineteenth century, maybe the early
Speaker 2: twentieth century that are are available, and if so, what
Speaker 2: would it cost to build a you know, a small
Speaker 2: library of a presidential library that you would never have
Speaker 2: a hope of having a Washington book or obviously there's
Speaker 2: no there's no autobiography of Abraham Lincoln signed because obviously
Speaker 2: he never wrote an autobiography. What what would a book
Speaker 2: signed by I don't know, James Buchanan or someone you
Speaker 2: know that area, Zachary Taylor or someone like that, a
Speaker 2: lesser known US president Benjamin Harrison. How much how much
Speaker 2: would a book like that be worth?
Speaker 3: They can probably range anywhere from four or five hundred
Speaker 3: to maybe one thousand and fifteen hundred, depends on what
Speaker 3: the book is, how it signed. Also would depend what
Speaker 3: it signed when they were president, which collectors prefer as
Speaker 3: opposed to before or after. So you know, you can
Speaker 3: get all sorts of variations on that, but no, they're
Speaker 3: out there. Actually, a really interesting one that sells for
Speaker 3: maybe around fifteen one hundred of dollars is a Life
Speaker 3: of Franklin Pierce. But one of the reasons that one's
Speaker 3: collected it was written by Nathaniel Hawthorn. He wrote the
Speaker 3: campaign biography for Pierce, and what do you know, he
Speaker 3: got a government job after that, Halikan did.
Speaker 2: And so the the books are about Pierce, written by Hawthorne,
Speaker 2: signed by Peers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fifteen twenty five hundred. Now the other thing that you've.
Speaker 2: Had, of course, is in New England from New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Is New Hampshire, so that would be an interesting but yeah,
Speaker 3: the lesser known presidents there's less demand. And yeah, you
Speaker 3: could in the mid hundreds to mid thousands you could
Speaker 3: get most everything. And if you're looking to collect modern presidents,
Speaker 3: I mean Jimmy Potter wrote a lot of books and
Speaker 3: signed them, Gerald Ford Bush, you know a lot of
Speaker 3: those you can get in a few hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 3: You know, it depends on what the news is. Kennedy
Speaker 3: is higher, but Truman, Eisenhower, they're all, you know, relatively
Speaker 3: within range and.
Speaker 2: That and how do you reach how if you if
Speaker 2: you're someone who's a novice and is starting off and saying, look,
Speaker 2: I want to have a book or two in my
Speaker 2: library that actually signed by a former president. Are they
Speaker 2: websites or would they go through someone like you and say, hey,
Speaker 2: can you direct me, you tell me, tell me what
Speaker 2: would be how would someone proceed?
Speaker 3: Well? What I yes, they can always get in touch
Speaker 3: with me, and I can always point them in the
Speaker 3: right direction or have things. It's one of the things
Speaker 3: is they could go to the book fair on through
Speaker 3: A through the tenth, and I guarantee you there will
Speaker 3: be dealers there with a fair number of signed presidential books,
Speaker 3: not only the Washington's and the Lincoln's, which there are
Speaker 3: signed books, but the more modern presidents and those dealers
Speaker 3: a lot of them will bring some of their better
Speaker 3: material to this fair. But they'll say, Okay, back at
Speaker 3: the shop or so on, we have this, this, this,
Speaker 3: We'll send you an email. Cattle. They're out there, they're available.
Speaker 3: People collect them.
Speaker 2: They cherish. What type of a book would have Washington
Speaker 2: affixed his signature to.
Speaker 3: Well, he actually signed most of the books that he
Speaker 3: had in his library at Mount Vernon and those so
Speaker 3: it's not just books that he wrote or had, it
Speaker 3: just books that he that belonged to him. Jeff Yah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Jefferson, the same thing. Lincoln. One of the ones
Speaker 3: that you can that as high up there is the
Speaker 3: Lincoln Douglas Debates, which was some of the most famous
Speaker 3: debates in presidential history. Now those runs into the tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars or more, but they're out there.
Speaker 3: They signed them. People were wanting autographs going right back
Speaker 3: to the early parts of this country.
Speaker 2: Uh, how do you know that you're getting a book
Speaker 2: that was actually signed? Uh you know, you you have
Speaker 2: no way of knowing that. You know, with a lot
Speaker 2: of uh, you know, baseball signatures there there there's letters
Speaker 2: of authenticity that come with a ball signed by Nicky
Speaker 2: Nantel and they have people who know the signature. Is
Speaker 2: that the same procedure with books?
Speaker 3: Percential it's you don't get the letters of authenticity as much.
Speaker 3: It's not as general as the sports. But there are
Speaker 3: people who this is their specialty. They've been doing this
Speaker 3: for years and years, very very good reputations. And if
Speaker 3: someone came to me asked, I could point them in
Speaker 3: the right direction. And also, uh, this organization that puts
Speaker 3: this on the interquarm booksellers, it's a vetted organization. It
Speaker 3: takes four or five years to get in. So there
Speaker 3: are things and then quite honestly, even the best experts
Speaker 3: can make them as and that can happen, but as
Speaker 3: soon as they realized they've made a mistake, they will refund, rectify,
Speaker 3: get you what you needed. And that's almost as important
Speaker 3: as you know that. Don't stand behind it.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's get to a couple of phone calls here.
Speaker 2: If you have an item you'd like to discuss with
Speaker 2: Ken Gloss of any written material, whether it's a book,
Speaker 2: a letter, or a manuscript of some sort. Let me
Speaker 2: go first off to Sandra in Carver. Sandra, you are
Speaker 2: next on night Side with Ken Gloss.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, Sandra, Okay, thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 4: And I just have a couple of questions. I do
Speaker 4: have a book here. I believe I talked to Brattle
Speaker 4: Street book Shop several years ago about this book.
Speaker 2: No Street, it's just brattle Bookshop book right, I bike
Speaker 2: rode down Bridle Street and it went a few years back.
Speaker 4: But anyways, in one of the little pages here it says,
Speaker 4: presented to blank it's No Name by the Church of
Speaker 4: the Incarnation, New York, Christmas eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: And what's the title of the book.
Speaker 4: It's Tennyson's first edition all his works.
Speaker 3: And where where was it printed? Do you have it
Speaker 3: in front of you? What's the I have the book
Speaker 3: right here.
Speaker 4: Let me just look New York Richard Worthington, seven to
Speaker 4: seven Old Broadway.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, see that's one of the reasons I asked
Speaker 3: that is Tennyson was the poet Laureate of England. His
Speaker 3: first editions were done in England, they weren't New York.
Speaker 3: So what you have there is probably a very nice
Speaker 3: old edition, but not the first or rare. You know,
Speaker 3: probably something that's in the ten to twenty five dollar range,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times when it says presented to
Speaker 3: it might have been something that was sold by the
Speaker 3: church or something in that range. But it is not
Speaker 3: a first edition because he was English in his first
Speaker 3: editions were done in London Indonesia.
Speaker 4: The person who gave me this book, that's what they
Speaker 4: told me. And I do have another little book if
Speaker 4: the World Atlas dated nineteen eighteen, pretty good condition.
Speaker 3: World Atlases nineteen eighteen is during the war, and so
Speaker 3: people tend to look more at atlases during the war.
Speaker 3: They like them better. You also tend to see, especially
Speaker 3: when you get to Europe in that area, how borderlines
Speaker 3: are changing from time to time. The politics change, the
Speaker 3: war changes things. But nineteen eighteen, though it's over one
Speaker 3: hundred years old for Atlas, isn't that rare? So you're
Speaker 3: probably talking twenty five fifty dollars at best. What you
Speaker 3: want to get is back into the seventeen sixteen, fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: and that's where the countries and the maps start looking
Speaker 3: a lot different, and that's where the collectors really go
Speaker 3: after them.
Speaker 2: Ra hope that hope that helps.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just curious. I have a couple of
Speaker 4: other books, but I couldn't dig them out.
Speaker 2: But not a problem. We'll have Ken Gloss on again.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sandra, I gotta check the break here, Okay,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 4: Mich Thank you, bye bye.
Speaker 2: We'll try to get a couple more calls in if
Speaker 2: you stick with us. It is now six one, seven, two,
Speaker 2: five four ten thirty six month seven nine three one
Speaker 2: ten thirty. What happens Ken in these situations If people
Speaker 2: start to call, then the phone's light up and we'll
Speaker 2: be here all night. But we're gonna keep cam with
Speaker 2: us until eleven o'clock. We'll try to get everyone in.
Speaker 2: We'll be back on night's side with some more with
Speaker 2: Ken Gloss right after a couple of messages.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: All right, let me get to back to the call.
Speaker 2: As my guest is Ken Gloss. Let me go to
Speaker 2: Florence and Groveland, Florence. You are on with Ken Gloss.
Speaker 2: Go right ahead, Florence. What's your question? What item would
Speaker 2: you like Ken to evaluate for you? Go ahead?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've got an item, Ken, And I just wanted
Speaker 5: to mention before I mentioned my item, Ken, I am
Speaker 5: related to Franklin Pius on my dad's.
Speaker 2: Okay books, Florence, go.
Speaker 5: Ahead, He didn't, but I'm an aviderator. Ken. My book
Speaker 5: I have my mother gave me a while back. It's
Speaker 5: the a copy I guess of the Scarlet Letter. It
Speaker 5: made it copyright nineteen twenty nine, and I was just
Speaker 5: wondering about it. The book is is old but very legible,
Speaker 5: and it has those very fine silky pages, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Paper, Okay, tent tent.
Speaker 2: Keen is going to be able to give you. My
Speaker 2: guess is that the Scarlett Letter was around well before that.
Speaker 2: And oh yeah, I might be disappointed with what Ken
Speaker 2: has to say.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, Ken, Well you be rich to know.
Speaker 2: Hold on, Hold on Fla, just hold on, let's give
Speaker 2: let's give kenn a shot here and then.
Speaker 3: You can still doing. The Scarlet Letter was done in
Speaker 3: the eighteen fifties, so if you had nineteen twenties, that's
Speaker 3: a good seventy years after. So it's old for years.
Speaker 3: But for Scarlet Letter, not that old. But the Scarlet
Speaker 3: Letter is a classic. It was done in hundreds of
Speaker 3: different edition and some of the ones were made as
Speaker 3: sort of gifts with very nice pages and so on.
Speaker 3: But they're not terribly valuable. Probably again in the ten
Speaker 3: twenty five dollar range. You just have to get one
Speaker 3: another seventy years.
Speaker 5: Older, okay, all right, it's not as though you could
Speaker 5: purchase one now, you know, the nineteen twenty nine days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're probably.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you definitely could find them and uh and you
Speaker 3: can find the others too. But it's it's interesting, it's fun,
Speaker 3: but not not terribly valuable.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks very much, Florence, and thanks for the
Speaker 2: comments about Franklin Pierce.
Speaker 5: Yank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Let me go next to Matt mad you're on with
Speaker 2: ken Glass so the Bridle Bookshop. Go ahead, Matt, all.
Speaker 3: Right, real quick.
Speaker 6: So I appreciate the time I actually authenticate for JSA,
Speaker 6: James Spence for sports. Now I have an item from
Speaker 6: Edgar Allen Poe that's a cut, a cut signature that
Speaker 6: has passed JSA and also Beckett Pending as real. What
Speaker 6: value is that? Looking at roughly, if it's just a.
Speaker 3: Cut signature without anything beyond that, you're probably talking in
Speaker 3: the five to five hundred to a few thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: depending on how doc, how bold you know, if there's
Speaker 3: any fading or some one in that range. Poll letters
Speaker 3: can go for thousands and thousands of dollars. But what
Speaker 3: really determines the value is the content of the letter,
Speaker 3: and that's what the collectors who are really looking for
Speaker 3: it looking for or assigned a book the cut signature.
Speaker 3: What people usually will do with that is get an
Speaker 3: old engraving, frame it up and you know, once to
Speaker 3: a store, you might be talking a few thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: but the frame itself could cost four or five hundred.
Speaker 3: So in that ballpark, that's cool.
Speaker 1: That's cool, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So you know, congratulations on that. That's yeah, No,
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's it's a great I would say,
Speaker 2: probably hold on to it for now. If you with
Speaker 2: if you had a letter with which was a legitimate
Speaker 2: Edgar Allen Pole letter, Uh, talking about Lamar Jackson. That
Speaker 2: would be worth a hell of a lotta time the
Speaker 2: current quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, who obviously are named
Speaker 2: after the poem, The Ravens. Thank you, Thank you, my friend. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say one of the things that when
Speaker 3: you're authenticating and looking letters, especially when it's a letter,
Speaker 3: is beyond even the signature you look historically, does it
Speaker 3: make sense? Was the person alive when this was written?
Speaker 2: Was? You know?
Speaker 3: Can it make sense? And that's part of the authentication
Speaker 3: process too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would not have ever written a letter about
Speaker 2: Lamar Jackson or for that matter, the Baltimore Ravens.
Speaker 3: Anyway, very much.
Speaker 2: That's easy, Yeah, yeah, I just had to have some
Speaker 2: fun with it, that's all. So, how can folks get
Speaker 2: in touch with you? Particularly? You were very gracious to
Speaker 2: offer the possibility of getting people tickets to the to
Speaker 2: the Friday night of the forty six lost at International Antiquarium,
Speaker 2: which is a twenty five dollars ticket. What's the best
Speaker 2: way they can read you this week?
Speaker 3: Well, you can always go to our website Bradlebookshop dot com,
Speaker 3: and it's all of the contact information is there. I mean,
Speaker 3: I would love it if you could come into the
Speaker 3: store and we could show you around, if you said
Speaker 3: you heard me on night side, if I'm there, I'll
Speaker 3: give you a tour and explain things. But and if
Speaker 3: you called the store, we you know, and I knew
Speaker 3: you were coming an email. I could just put some
Speaker 3: tickets aside for you. But I really encourage you. If
Speaker 3: you have any inkling in history and sports and collectable books,
Speaker 3: autograph this show at the Hinds the eighth through the tenth.
Speaker 3: You'll love it. Even if you don't think you'll love it,
Speaker 3: you'll love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the real It is the real deal. Ken
Speaker 2: Gloss is always your one of my my most fascinating guests.
Speaker 2: Your your depth and breadth of knowledge about politics, literature,
Speaker 2: sports is unbelievable. Thank you, my friend. We will talk soon, okay.
Speaker 3: And thank you, and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan Ken Gloss of Brattle Bookshop on West
Speaker 2: Street in Boston, not to be confused with Brattle Street
Speaker 2: anywhere else. Thanks Ken. We'll talk soon when we come back.
Speaker 2: Our final twenty twenty presidential poll. I want to know
Speaker 2: if the election were held today and it's only a
Speaker 2: couple of week and a half away or so, now,
Speaker 2: who would be your candidate. We've done this. This will
Speaker 2: be our eighth month. We do the twentieth hour the
Speaker 2: last Friday of the month. It happens to be the
Speaker 2: twenty fifth of October. We will not have another last
Speaker 2: Friday of the month before November fifth. So dial away.
Speaker 2: If you called earlier this week you get a hall passed,
Speaker 2: you can call in this hour as well and tell us.
Speaker 2: You can tell us who you think will win and
Speaker 2: who you're going to vote for, And in most cases
Speaker 2: it's probably pretty similar. If you want to tell us
Speaker 2: who you're going to vote for, but you don't think
Speaker 2: that person's going to win, that would be an interesting
Speaker 2: issue as well. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten
Speaker 2: thirty six one seven, nine three one ten thirty Back
Speaker 2: after the eleven o'clock news