Old Guides as Maps to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Examples of the almost 700 guides
Ten years ago, David Gerstel of Montreal, Canada, a long time collector of travels and voyages, searching for a less costly collecting opportunity began to collect American Stranger’s Guides, books published mainly in the 19th century to help itinerants understand cities they would visit. These are intensely local directories, often with maps, always with advertisements, listing essential details for the newly arrived. In their heyday they provided essential information, and in retrospect, perspective on the rising fortunes of American cities. A dozen years ago, such books were gathering dust on dealer shelves and David simply bought them all. He bought at shows and from dealer catalogues. Often the material wasn’t even catalogued. When he exhausted dealer supplies he shifted his focus to the Internet to search for more. Later he would buy them on eBay – spending a further year and a half building his collection into an almost seven hundred item snapshot of America in the throes of the industrial revolution.
A dozen years later David is moving on, now looking to invest the proceeds of his early adapter perspective on city directories, into further purchases in his primary collection and first love, Pacific exploration books prior to 1700 and books on Buccaneers including Drake and Anson. Selling what he has collected now becomes the challenge.
To do this he has enlisted the help of Bernie [Bernhard] Lauser of Voyager Press Rare Books & Manuscripts in Vancouver. Bernie is an interesting choice as he is one of the few dealers who represent sellers wanting to sell thematic collections as well as archives. Some of the inventory he sells is consigned and he doesn’t make money unless it sells. Most consignment agreements are a year so he brings urgency to what is usually a laid back field.
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Old Guides as Maps to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Examples of the almost 700 guides
He knows he has something that’s very interesting but may be like Apples in June, all promise but little immediate prospect. He insists his client judge the market realistically and he has secured Mr. Gerstel’s agreement that the collection can be paid for over a period of two to three years. Their hope is to place the collection with a research library. The depth of local information promises to be the bedrock of what many believe will be the next frontier in historical analysis, the reconstruction of the details in daily life in those disparate places lucky enough to have had directories published during their emergence from agrarian backwaters to 20th century cities. Such material will be the essential building blocks of such research.
But so far, inquiries to a handful of the important research libraries have been met with protestations of no budget. The real culprit seems to be the intensifying interest in very local research while the Gerstel collection is unabashedly national.
The answer of course may be to send the material into the auction rooms. That would realize a quicker payment of a market-determined amount that will be subject to cataloguing, promotion, timing and fate. In other words, the only important fact Mr. Gerstel wants to know is the one fact he won’t know: the price. To him it sounds like a Sunday stroll on death row.
There is another possibility and it’s that another collector will come forward to acquire the collection and carry it on. Such a commitment may fit for an entirely traditional collector but this collection is also particularly well suited to a younger collector looking over the next horizon. Such a collection will, at least in part, be needed in the digitization of local life and thereby contribute to the rewriting of American history. Collectors, looking for a ten year project with the potential to bridge local and digital history should find this appealing because it’s not just collecting, its collecting with impact.
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Old Guides as Maps to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Examples of the almost 700 guides
If no institution or collector emerges Mr. Gerstel may decide to consign this material to auction. This will provide resolution but the outcome will be uncertain until the hammer falls on the last item. If so, he’ll have a few Angels with Dirty Faces moments along the way.
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Contacts
Bernhard Lauser, Voyager Press
Info@voyager-press.com
604.720.2000
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