Today I found "Famous Men of Ancient Times" by S.G.Goldrich! The copy was published in 1855.

Have you ever found some old gems of books?

I have a collection of Shakespeare's writings published in 1927

A History of the Reformation published in 1875

A collection of Mark Twain's essays published in 1910 (by the looks of it, it may have been published in honor of him since he died that same year)

My uncle used to demo houses on people's land. He's got many treasures. A book from the early 1800's and he even found a money stash in a chimney of confederate bank notes.

Cool, remember demoed an house and found an newspaper about the Japanese capitulation who ended WW2 inside a wall.

My guess somebody was fixing the house and left it as an fun time capsule.

Old photographic pictures of women showing knee. I think people were killed for them.


While repairing the house from flood damage a few years back some newspapers that talked about Tandy computers and typing

People used to stuff walls with news papers for insulation. It was a cheap trick that worked fairly well. The only issue was if the house caught fire.

While tearing down a wall I found a newspaper from 1948. Never found anything as cool as 19th century book. Come to think about it, I've had a really humdrum life. Is it possible that I pulled a Picard and asked Q to give me a dull, safe life....

A newspaper with a story about Henry Ford saying the US would not get into Europe's war against Germany. Ford had many positive things to say about Germany, though he never mentioned their leader....

I've haunted used bookstores for years wherever I travel. Three of the things I've found: a leather-bound collected works of Robert Burns from 1835, a first edition of the three-volume Longfellow translation of Dante's Comedy from 1867 and a 21-volume Household Edition of dikeens from 1871. And not ancient but valuable to me anyway: a copy of the September 1952 Life issue that published Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.

From my memory, he was talking about World War II so yeah...THAT leader... :/

http://imgur.com/VhFdg9L


Do I win?


This belongs to my bf's parents or grandparents, can't remember which. It's a book of maps.


The date impressed me enough to photograph it.

That's pretty cool.

years ago when I was helping a relative move, I found some old business documents from a company another relative of mine owned in the 50s.. thats about the closest thing

All the proper book shops I've ever been to have stuff like that. One I nearly bought recently was what looked like a fairly early edition of On the Origin of Species. I've got a few battered copies of old books upstairs but probably nothing pre-1900. The oldest with a date is a two volume set of the Brothers Karamazov that I still haven't read from 1936. I think my copy of the Man in the Iron Mask might be a bit older, but it's undated. There's a few books on our shelf which belong to my girlfriend with 19th century dates - the oldest one being from 1857 (a French book of proto-sociology by someone I've never heard of) - but it's all fairly obscure stuff that I think she got more because she liked the look of the books than because of the contents.

And here I thought you were going to tell us about this skin bound tome you found.

For a moment you got me thinking of the Necronomicon.

During my rare visits to the library I do come across some dusty tomes (*ahem* engineering texts which have seen little use). The oldest was from the 60s.

The two oldest books I own are fairly recent compared to some on here: Protozoology by R. Kudo (1950) - a bit tatty, and How to know the Protozoa by Jahn (1949) which is in amazing condition for its age.

I actually have the original copy of the Necronomicon, I have to keep it in the shed though as it makes weird noises which startles my cat, keith.


Totally not lying at all.