Once in a rare while an online transaction between book dealer and customer can go bad. Thankfully, for both seller and buyer, it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can leave a bad taste in the mouth about buying expensive books online. I’ve had my share of mishaps; they happen usually in your early days as a collector when you’re still figuring out how the trade works. I’d like to recount two such mishaps here, and the lessons learnt from them.
Before that, though, I must say I can still never get over how smoothly, efficiently, even magically, buying from online antiquarian dealers around the world works most of the time. There is so much trust on both sides: you pay upfront and wait the two weeks it takes for internationally shipped parcels to arrive — and when it does, you find it is exactly what the dealer promised.
Sometimes, though, it’s not what you expected or wanted. The first sour experience I had was with a bookseller in the U.K. Usually they are wonderful to deal with, and when my negotiations with this particular dealer (whom I’ll call Dealer A) began, it, too, felt secure — until the antiquarian item in question arrived.
Gold-burnished
I was keen on acquiring a much sought after chromolithographic book published in the 19th century titled Illuminated Ornaments Selected from Manuscripts famous for its spectacular use of hand colouring and tinting. In fact, it’s often described as the most beautiful book published in the Victorian period, a high point in the use of chromolithography. A remarkable English draughtsman named Henry Shaw actually engraved the 59 or so plates in the book, and then they were painstakingly coloured individually by hand in rich, deep pigments, and in a few deluxe editions, burnished in gold.
On average, the book costs around £400, but while scouring dealers listing copies of the Shaw book, I came across one provincial English dealer listing it for £200. I asked for details, and he assured me that it was indeed the same edition (William Pickering, 1833, London) I was looking for. The book, a large folio and quite heavy, meant the shipping would be expensive, since it had to be by air. I paid via Paypal, and waited for this bespoke volume to arrive, feeling pretty pleased at having scored a bargain. To my dismay, on opening the large, weighty parcel, I found the plates were black and white. It was missing the very thing it was known for: colour.
Where’s the colour?
It must have been some trial proof copy that did not get to the final production stage of being hand coloured. I checked a few reference books dealing with Victorian illustrated books, and the work of Shaw and Pickering in particular, and there was no mention of copies in black and white. The book was conceived and executed with the sole purpose of showing colour chromolithography. I wrote quickly to the bookseller, adding that I wanted to return the volume — at my expense.
He emailed back to say he had been unaware of these bibliographical points because someone else had catalogued it. He would have to check with his cataloguer who was an authority on these things. The usual terms for most established dealers is any book is returnable for any reason within a week to 10 days of purchase, so strictly speaking I could return it if I did not want to keep this anomalous copy.
I soon discovered dealer A had no intention of taking it back — for any reason. Apparently, his cataloguer swore he had seen other black and white copies of this Victorian masterpiece. I asked “A” about the seller terms listed on his third party page (Abebooks, Biblio, Alibris, etc) as books being returnable, and he flatly said he would not be honouring that since I had bought directly from him.
This was a rude shock since I felt he ought to honour those standard terms, especially because the transaction had been a direct, personal one, where he profits more in not having to pay third party fees. Anyway, it was a lesson learnt, the moral being: if you haven’t already established a relationship with a dealer, it’s safer buying via a third party booksite, as they’ll share some of the responsibility for a bad transaction, urge the dealer to take the purchase back, and process a refund.
Damage control
My second mishap with Dealer B wasn’t her fault; it was just a mishap, plain and simple, but nevertheless resulted in a loss for both of us. I bought a sumptuous fine press book from an American dealer priced at $250, with the proviso that I would return it in the same condition within the stipulated returns period if I ended up not liking it as much as I thought I would.
The book arrived, it was in lovely condition, I handled it carefully for a few days, and decided to return it. I chose a fairly fast and expensive shipping method, and then waited for the dealer to refund the price. When I next heard from the dealer it was a nasty email, noting that the book had been damaged in transit, and she could not accept it. Had I insured it? No, I had not. I hadn’t known any better then. Second costly lesson: always insure anything that is $100 or more.
We resolved it as best as we could, and I bought the book back from the dealer. I have since grown fond of it and am rather glad I got stuck with it; the other one, though, sits conspicuously on my shelf as a reminder of how a perfectly good arrangement such as online rare book trading can be foiled by a few dodgy dealers.
The writer is a bibliophile, columnist, and critic.
