Vintage editions have their own charm – they smell in a special way, the text is typed in an unusual font, and the illustrations are made by hand and with soul. But their charm does not end there either.
Even in those books that are in your own home library, you can sometimes find a real treasure. It can be a note that will revive a whole heap of memories, and a dried flower, and a banknote that was in a hurry pawned instead of a bookmark, and even forgotten. And in second-hand bookstores, where they sell old books, in libraries – there you can dig even more amazing things between the pages.
Used book sellers say these books are in constant demand. After all, new ones are often indecently expensive, and you can fearlessly take the old one with you to the beach, read while lying in the bath, without fear that the book will deteriorate.
Plus there is a chance for a miracle. For example, an elderly woman in Australia ordered a yearbook from World of Books, a huge used books store. She remembered what she was like as a child – with tests, puzzles. Then the yearbook disappeared somewhere.
“When she received it, she did not believe it with her own eyes – it was the same yearbook signed for her by mom and dad,” says the portal. .
But it was not only the Australian woman who was lucky. On social media, users share other amazing things they found in old books. For example, a dried lizard.
Historical memory – five pound sugar card. Yes, rationed products were not only in the USSR. And in the Bible, published in the middle of the nineteenth century, a peacock feather was found.
Among the finds are hiding places where something was clearly forbidden, and antique glasses or a school report card, filled out more than 90 years ago. And someone got an invaluable thing for a fan: a photograph of Stephen King in the book “The Shining” he signed.
Family photos – you can collect a whole archive of them. And in one bookstore there is a wall on which things forgotten in books are hung: from pictures to tickets for concerts 30 years ago and recipes published 40 years ago. Between the pages they even found money that had long gone out of use. For example, the currency that the Japanese issued during the occupation of the Philippines. For collectors, surely a valuable item.
There were also some unpleasant finds. For example, a lock of someone’s brown hair is matted and covered in dust. In one of the Italian libraries, readers came across a human finger. And one girl shared a story about her goldfish: she simply disappeared from her aquarium, which was on a bookcase. Later, the girl found a fish in one of the books – it had long since dried up and turned to stone.
What did you find in the old books?
Peacock feather in the old Bible.