Florida Antiquarian Book Fair - 2024 - Day Two

Saturday - what a day!  Today was the second day of the fun-tastic and Seuss-tacular Florida Antiquarian Book Fair (Florida Antiquarian Book Fair), and boy, was it crowded!  Which, of course, is a great thing for the many dealers that are there this weekend.  The Book Fair has been sharing some of the excitement on their Facebook page (Florida Antiquarian Book Fair - Facebook), but honestly, if you are not there in person, there's no way you can experience the joy of breathing in the smell of all those books or overloading your senses with the look and feel of hardcovers, paperbacks, magazines, and every other imaginable paper ephemera you for which you could be looking.  Despite the crowds, Will and I, along with our friend Ray who joined us today, managed to go through booth after booth after booth to find some more treasures!

We started off on the same path we took yesterday - heading right up the far left aisle, checking out some dealer shelves we missed yesterday, and chatting up with the guy at the Intergalactic Trading booth.  We finally made it to the last booth in that aisle, which was none other than the Inkling Book Shoppe out of Lakeland!  It's always great to catch up with Matt Whalon (pictured), as well as Finley Walker (not pictured), and they had some fantastic books for sale!  I picked up a couple of early printing, red-board Hardy Boys, as well as an early printing of The Secret of the Caves and a couple of wrap spine Hardy Boys for a close friend, and was very tempted to get The Three Investigators no. 39 that he had for sale (I may still pick that up tomorrow if he still has it!). They had plenty of other books for sale, from classics to sci-fi, some Dungeons & Dragons, along with a number of Tom Swift, Sr. in dust jacket, some Dana Girls, Ted Scott, Red Randall, Rover Boys, and so much more.  He also had stack of dust jackets for sale for collectors who have un-jacketed Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books!  But there was one book that stood out above all the rest...

 

...and that book would be the last Tom Swift, Jr. book, number 33 - Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts! Matt has a beautiful copy of this book for sale, and for Tom Swift collectors, this is a much sought-after book.  I was fortunate enough to receive one as a gift back in 2006 from a dear friend, otherwise, I would have likely scooped this beauty right up!  It's not often you see this book out in the wild, so to speak, and the copies I see for sale online are nowhere near this good of shape!  It's well worth the price, and if someone misses out on it this weekend, that would be a true loss!

Another great seller on hand this year is Gary Overmann, who always has such a wonderful selection of children's books from which to choose.  He has plenty of Oz books by Baum, Thompson, Neil, and others, as well as classics such as Pooh, Little House, Raggedy Ann, and more.  But, of course, my eye is always on the lookout for those series books, and Gary never disappoints.  I'm not sure how he manages to have such a great inventory of these books, but clearly I wasn't the only one there looking for them - he said someone at the show bought him out of every Nancy Drew had with him this weekend!  But that's okay, because he still had plenty of others left for me, Ray, and Will to pour over and buy.

 

Gary has for sale Judy Bolton, Hardy Boys, Dana Girls, Cherry Ames, Tom Swift, Boxcar Children, Happy Hollisters, Thornton Burgess, Uncle Wiggly, Tarzan, the Little Colonel, Bomba the Jungle Boy, and the list goes on and on.  He had both picture covers and dust jacket editions, and he even still had one of the two Nancy Drew picture books (which surprised me that the Nancy Drew collector from earlier had not bought that with the rest of the Nancys!).  He also had two of Mildred Wirt's Brownie Scouts books, which I don't see too often.  He had so many books, that some where shelved behind the ones in front, making it a fun scavenger hunt for collectors like us, who pulled out the books in front for the hope of finding one of the treasures we need hidden behind.   While Will stood there looking through each of the Hardy Boys books to determine which ones he still needed (he had already bought a Vicki Barr and a Dana Girls from Gary yesterday!), I was combing through the Happy Hollisters to search for ones on the list a friend gave me to find for her, as well as the Dana Girls for the ones I needed to fill in my gaps. As I said, Gary is always guaranteed to have something we need, so he truly is a must-go-to for children's series book collectors!

 

Now, I would be remiss if I did not share the wonderful even that was celebrated today at the show.  In honor of Dr. Seuss's 120th birthday, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair hosted a birthday sing-a-long and served cake to all who attended.  The Cat in the Hat, along with Thing 1 and Thing 2 were also present, and they walked around reminding everyone just how much fun reading can be!  Dr. Seuss was, in actuality, Theodor Seuss Geisel, wrote and illustrated more than 60 books under the guise of "Dr. Seuss."  His birthday, March 2nd, was adopted as the annual "National Read Across America Day," which encourages reading and teaches the importance, value and fun of reading!  Thus, it was only appropriate that the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair would celebrate this awesome day - and in case you were wondering, there were LOTS of dealers at the show offering Dr. Seuss books for sale.  And what better way to start your child on a journey of fun and discovery than with a Dr. Seuss book?

Now, I have to share two very interesting finds that I picked up at the show today.  While browsing through a shelf of pulp novels, I came across one titled Three Loose Ladies by M. H. Gropper, which featured a red head, a blonde, and a brunette on the cover, along with the tagline, "They were the cover girls on the book of temptation.  This is their intimate story."  Will and I laughed, joking the girls hair colors made us think of Nancy, Bess, and George.  Well, just a few books later, I came across another book with the exact same cover art (except instead of a red background, this one featured a white background).  However, this book was titled Three Gorgeous Hussies, was written by Jack Woodford, and was published by a different company.  Even more odd, the book featured the same exact tagline as the first!  I was intrigued enough to purchase them both - and after taking a cursory look at them, I discovered they are completely different stories, despite the same art and tagline!  Needless to say, my research into these two books is only beginning...

 

And that just goes to show, you never know what fun and exciting (and unique!) things you'll find at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair!  Can't wait to see what surprises I'll find tomorrow!

 

RATING:   50 copycat covers out of 50 for surprising me with books I didn't even know I needed or wanted and opening the door for research that I'm eager to dig into as soon as possible!