It has been a day of brilliant collections in our Oxfam shop. 

For example,

Most of the time, we get donations which are an assortment of what people have accumulated – 1970s cookery books ( but not those which are now worth something), The Reader’s Digest Book of Cats, browned paperbacks – Neville Shute shunted against Catherine Cookson etc etc.

Dated management accountancy text books, unread self-help books, the complete collection of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels – all with numbered labels so you knew in which order to read them – but all left in ‘our garage which got a bit damp but they will dry out eventually.’ No, they won’t or at least they will dry out over a long time and in no condition to sell. 

But there are some collections which make a Thursday morning a delight.

This maybe new to you but the publisher Collins published a series of books branded New Naturalists which is, in case you didn’t know:

Collins New Naturalist series is the longest-running and arguably the most influential natural history series in the world with over 100 volumes published in over 60 years. 

Now some of these are quite rare and therefore valuable – for reasons you may to want to be bothered with the rare ones are those printed in the middle of the series.

It began in 1945 with Butterflies. And from this you can see that one of the delights of the books is the beautiful covers. They are very lovely.

We had nowhere near the complete collection see below, but we did have more in a donation than we usually get.

No, that is an image of what we would love to have – that collection worth £6,000. Ours, not so much….

At the same time, our ace book-sorter told me of a carrier bag he had found full of King Penguins.

Now you maybe familiar with Penguin books – so popular with interior design Instagram aficionados – never mind the quality (of the writing) see the width of orange vintage books on your shelves.

Not that I am judging of course – and have to admit I have a shelfful.

Anyway, King Penguins are an eclectic series of books hardback, slim volumes published between 1939 and 1959 and were monographs ( short books on specific subjects)

The Carvings in Exeter cathedral, Edible Fungi and indeed Poisonous Fungi, Russian Icons, Book of Spiders, Ballooning, Early British Railways, The Isle of Wight – well if you want to know the full list see here https://penguinchecklist.wordpress.com/early-series/king-penguins/

So, taking this list and publication dates, I spent a couple of hours going through what we had been given – did we have a full collection and were they all first editions?

That would have been a say, £200 collection.

But…..

We had one which wasn’t a first edition and more importantly, we had one of the books missing.

Really? Just one book? 

The should have been 76 books, was a pile of 75.

I looked it up – The Book of Scrips, in case you were wondering. I could buy a decent one online for £10 and I thought about it …. but not for long.

And some of the 75 ( but not many) were not in the best of rude health – spines a bit tattered….

So, I decided to put them down on the table with the New Naturalists – collections akimbo – with a sign saying this was a (very) nearly complete set but missing one book. And we wished anyone who bought them and went searching for the missing book, good luck and our best wishes.

I was at the back of the shop, sorting new donations when a colleague told me someone wanted to buy the books – they had been on the table for, say, 15 minutes.

The lovely woman who bought them had never heard of them, knew nothing about them, had fallen in love with some of the titles and lovely cover designs, was more than happy to pay the £50.

And as a determined charity shopper she was planning on refusing the charms of buying the missing book on the internet but would consider it a challenge/treasure hunt to find a copy.

She promised to come and tell me when/if she found it.

And finally, for those of us who recently heard about a type of concrete which seems to be a) dodgy b)in some cases dangerous and c) not entirely taken seriously in the budget for repairs Government decisions – repairs aren’t that vote catching after all.

These advisory leaflets were issued by the then government……. just saying.