Quite often I get a sense of the life junk had before it came to me. Sometimes it’s melancholy, sometimes interesting, and occasionally surprisingly intimate.

Death clearances are an odd one. I sometimes get a idea of what kind of life someone had, as well as getting to explore tiny parts of them that no one else cared about, maybe that no one else ever saw. Seeing someone’s entire life reduced to a pile of junk in a dumpster is an interesting commentary on how physical memory is values in this society. Often no one cares about them enough to process their belongings properly, people die alone and the council throws all their stuff away. I know everyone deals with death differently & my way is not right for everyone, but I don’t think it’s right to waste things industrialised life clearances feel like the machinations of a cold monster.

Anyway. Recently I found a small collection of books, mostly outdoors and survival related including a number of books by an author called “BB”. As I was sorting through them I noticed most had no ISBN, this helps to evaluate books as it usually means one of two things

1: The book was printed before around the 1970s

2: The book is part of a limited print run

Most of the books were in good condition and there were a number of first editions, but they also seemed to tell a story about the person who collected them. One of the books in the BB collection was “The Forest Of Boland Light Railway”, this is clearly a childrens’ book and even had a primary school sticker on it reading “this book is the property of [redacted]”. It’s also one of the few explicitly childrens’ books by that author.

I guessed that this was the first book they collected and likely the reason they got into BB to start with. The collecting seems to have continued with a number of first editions and early prints from book stores over the years with old prices written on the inside cover, even multiple copies of the same book with one being an older / more collectible edition, so they were actually going for collecting first editions if they could. Several had prices of £30-£50. The last few BB books were recent limited edition prints and would have cost way more than reading copies. This was a proper collection accumulated over many years.

So the story I imagined is one of a boy who got into this author, collected expensive first edition prints when he got older and got some money, and eventually got bored with it – the last few books may have been gifts & looked like they had never been read. The gradual decline of interest culminated in him or his mum or whoever putting the whole lot out on the kerb. There were also a few other books about shooting & army stuff, so maybe he actually joined the army when he left home and lost interest in childhood things.

It seemed a shame to break up the collection & with the amount of information available I could probably have tracked him down ( to tell him what exactly, I don’t know. Maybe “hey do you know your mum threw all your books away”). . but I thought better of it.

All in the books brought in around £200. Most went on eBay, a couple on vinted. Vinted does not let you sell books which don’t have an ISBN so this excluded most of them.