Fine and Rare Books Are More Common Than You Think, with Arthur Fournier

0:01 Welcome to the Executorium podcast. I'm your host, Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate on social media, and we get together and talk about different interview vendors who help executors execute the assets that they're responsible for, whether it be a probate or trust or litigation, somebody's in charge of an estate. There's a lot of work involved and a lot of experts. Executorium is a great resource to find those experts. So, one of the people listed in New York in Kings County, New York in particular, is a fine and rare book business. Arthur Fournier will describe what that looks like. Arthur, what is a fine and rare book? What is it that people might find in the course of going through their parents' home or house that they're dealing with that might look like a fine and rare book? Well, good afternoon, Bill. Thank you for inviting me to the Executorium podcast. I'm delighted to be here. I am a member of the Antiquarian Book Sellers Association of America, which is the national trade association for rare book sellers. And in addition to that, I also work as a broker and dealer of manuscript material and correspondence related to the cultural history of the 20th century. So, broadly speaking, what you might call archives. I am the owner and founder of Arthur Fournier Fine and Rare. And there are two distinct categories there, right? A fine book might be, you know, a beautiful leatherbound tome such as this one.

1:32 You know, a rare book about poetry in Mexico. It's beautiful. It's identifiable as a fine object. You know, you can kind of tell, you can kind of see it on the shelf. You say, "Hey, I bet there's something interesting about that." And you always want to look at these and you want to look at other things like first edition novels in good dust jackets. Like what is a dust jacket? Well, it's that slip of paper that goes around the hardback book when it was originally published in the 1920s, 1930s through the 1990s and today a lot of the value of your book is going to be determined by the condition of that dust wrapper. So these are things that we know with respect to collectibles generally, you know, thought of as fine and rare books. but I'm also interested in those materials that might escape your attention when you're looking through your parents or your loved ones possessions after they're gone. sometimes people have single slips of paper or little brochures or pamphlets lying around related to their life activities that might be more valuable than that fine leatherbound book I just showed you. it could be a pamphlet like this. I'm just picking up what I happen to have on my desk right now, which is a spiralbound, self-published art catalog from Paris, France called Aspects of Racism. And it's 1971. It helped the French public understand what was going on in the civil rights movement in the United States. You know, doesn't look like much. Looks like a school report that, you know, a kid made in the 1970s or something like that. But no library has it. And almost every library in America right now wants it.

3:13 So even though I was able to acquire this quite cheaply at a flea market in France, nobody saw value in it. I will be able to sell it to a library for a significant sum of money in the hundreds of dollars. Now you know this principle can be scaled and applied broadly. Say for example, Bill, if you had a relative who was a major figure in the civil rights movement or an important author or a politician or a really notable event inventor and entrepreneur, all of these people might have kept what we would generally call their papers, right? which would include photographs, letters, diaries, date books, correspondence, their manuscripts, meaning the first drafts of history that they wrote down maybe on the back of a bar napkin, maybe in a spiralbound notebook, maybe they typed it up. Maybe their editors put notes in the margins and helped them turn that first draft of their novel into a better novel. you know, everything that goes into the process and flow of doing their life's work, whatever they kept, we would call that their archive or their papers. And so I'm a broker who manages the relationship between estates and executors and university rare book libraries, museums and institutional research repositories like the Getty, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, the Ransom Center in UT Austin, Texas and various other places like that around the world to help people identify, preserve and protect the first drafts of history that might come into their possession in an unexpected way. You know, famously, I went to college at USC in Los Angeles and our B a basketball coach back about 30 years ago, George Raveling told the story when he was a kid, he went to Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech happened to be there happened to be within for whatever reason within 10

5:15 15 feet. And when he was done, Dr. King just pulled out his notes that he had read from or I guess you know the version of the speech he wrote out and hand it to him as if to throw it away. And obviously he this is like one of the first African-American basketball coaches. I remember him as a coach I think in the 70s. So he goes back a ways at a major university. but you know he held on to it. Now I imagine for him he's not going to sell it because I can't imagine what that would have been like as a child to be at that spot in history. It's like unbelievable. But after a generation or two the family, you know, doesn't have the same appreciation for it and or there might be more errors and the money is more valuable. So when something comes to you like this from an estate, what's that look like? Is there is there an executor saying, "Hey, we have this thing and it's been the family for a while, but now they're just looking to maximize the I know some people would say we want to donate it and be recognized for that." That's great. But some people say you really we just want to know what the value of it is and can you sell it for us and give us cash. Is that is that part of the process? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now there are different things that you identified there. We just want to know what the value of this is. Well, you might ask me or one of my colleagues who has similar qualifications to do an appraisal. I am a qualified appraiser and I am up to date with the USPAP guidelines for professional appraisal practices as defined by the US Congress and the Department of Treasury. I am trained in the current standards and guidelines that are acted through 2026. So, I could help you develop an opinion of value, fair market value, that you could take to your accountant and make a donation that would be seen in the eyes of the IRS as a qualified and acceptable, you know, you any donation you might make over $5,000 basically needs to be vetted by an appraisal professional and they have to since 2017 be qualified in USPAP standards because there used to be a lot

7:19 Of fraud around that. I am qualified. Certain other appraisers in my field are qualified, but it's a small number of us because this is a new standard and it is a continuing education burden. I am versed in it because so many people were coming to me and saying like I don't want to sell this but I know it's valuable. I need to get a good donation from the IRS. And it used to be you could just ask your accountant to get somebody to come around and say yeah that's worth about 50 grand. Well, you know, now if you want something to be worth 50 grand on paper as a donation charitably, you need somebody to say, "Look, I've examined it. I know that it's authentic. I have looked at auction comparables within the last three years and I have developed an opinion of value which is consistent with the unified standards of professional appraisal practice. You can take my notarized report to the IRS. They will examine it and decide that this is correct and then they will indeed give you that $50,000 charitable credit and that's hypothetical number hypothetical situation. But that's an appraisal. So that's what is this worth? Now I also wearing a completely different hat as a dealer. Absolutely. And that's something I'm always delighted to do. There are two pathways there. One is sell it to me. I'll happily buy a selection of books from your attic, a few boxes of papers, the old rock and roll posters in your garage or under your bed. I'll probably buy a lot of those. now if you have, say, for example, those notes from Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech. In my opinion, just hearing about them, that gives me chills. And I think the Smithsonian would be interested. I think a large number of American educational institutions would be interested. I would probably say, look, I don't want to try to beat you down on price and, you know, kick over a wide margin for myself. What I want to do is I want to represent you as your advocate and as your dealer, as your broker for

9:23 Those papers, and I will do so on a commission basis. I won't charge you anything in advance, but I'll help you understand what they are. I will help you develop materials and relationships so that we can create the highest and best presentation of those documents to the highest and best client. And if we work together to do that under an agreement, I would not charge you a dime until they're sold. And after you get paid, I get paid. My commission would probably be about 20% on that. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. And in a in the case of those documents, I mean, you have a story behind it. You have the actual proof he received it. I mean, really, it's a that's unique case, but let's talk about the more common case. So, you I mean, and this is really exciting stuff to talk about. but executors on our call are going to have, you know, parents, grandparents who have those collectible the rock posters, the movie posters. I think I see those regularly. you know you know they might have a first edition book but generally you know I'm not I'm not don't come across those kinds of things as often as you know really old books a great grandma handed down they don't you know they don't really know what it is but it's you know one or two at a time. What's a typical estate come to you with or is there a typical or most common type of situation? there everything's different and you know I will just say this look most people avoid looking at the bookshelves or avoid thinking about them because you know they're their hunch is probably right 99% of the time books on the shelf are probably going to be donation to Goodwill or to Books for a Better World or to a local library sale. there might however be one or two books in that collection that could have hundreds of dollars of value. There might in rare cases be a book that have thousands of dollars in value and in very rare cases you know there might be a book that would have tens of thousands of dollars in value and you might not know it unless you're an expert unless you work

11:25 For an auction house or unless you're a rare book seller or a collector yourself. So, it's always good to have someone come in and look at the shelves and you know and I've done that in many cases for family, friends, u for clients and I have carefully poured over the shelves for three or four hours in the afternoon and I say it's been a delight to get to know your dad because he was a brilliant reader. He clearly loved spy novels. He loved golf. He loved all kinds of really exciting things and he was an engaged and passionate man. His books are fascinating, but they're not financially valuable. So, what I would direct a client to do in that case is to say, make sure all your family, friends, all the kids, all the grandkids get to come in here and grab a book that'll remind them of their granddad. And then donate the rest of these to the local library, you know, for sale if they've got it. If not, call Goodwill, call Books for Better World or Books for Better Life, I think. there are a number of these book brokers online that'll pick up entire libraries for free and then they resell them and some of the money goes to charity. Probably some of the money goes to support the staff and the organization etc. But it keeps the books in circulation. So that's the most common case, right? Get someone in who can scan through and say these five or 10 things might have some value. Either sell them to me or let me sell them on your behalf on a commission basis. And in general, I say, you know, look for a book seller who has these four letters after their name, ABA, AAA, and that's the Antiquarian Book Sellers Association of America. We are people who don't accept everybody into our club. You have to be reputable and vetted by colleagues. We have a code of ethics, so we don't rip people off. we're going to offer we're going to make a transparent, fair market value for your books. and you know, that's really pretty much guaranteed if somebody from the ABAA seems to be treating you unfairly or you know,

13:28 Pulling the wool over your eyes, you can contact the ABAA and say, "Hey, what's going on with this situation? Doesn't seem right to me." And then, you know, colleagues will get involved and we'll keep it correct. U, and that's one of those things. It's sort of like, look, if you had a stamp collection, how would you know if you're not a philatelist? a professional stamp, you know, dealer and collector. If you're not in that world, you might not know if it's, you know, for the recycling bin or for the auction house. And the same thing with books. And the same thing with posters. The same thing with postcards and old photographs. If they're not family photographs, but you had a collector in your family who bought old photographs and made an interesting pile of them in their lifetime, some of them could be valuable. Yeah. to somebody to the right person. I think the other part is it's the right person. Most people have no interest in it, but as professional, I'm sure you have either access to or people are looking coming to you looking for the right people if you have those things available. It's funny you describe the book because I whenever I've been to a house where they're going to sell items, I always look at the book. I find it fascinating. You really feel like you understand somebody and then I always find like one or two books I love to have. It obviously only has only been read once. I'm that kind of person. I only buy new books and I've you try to keep them and we run out of room and empirically we get rid of a bunch of them and then keep money again. We get rid of a bunch of them and I was like could I just you know I love that book.

14:56 I never thought about buying it. It's right there in front of me but as a professional I can't you know you really can't do that. So, well, here's here's here's a story. I'll tell you, just a quick story, and you know, I'll keep names out of it because, you know, I respect the privacy of my clients, but I was recently at a house you know, for a prominent editor who passed away in New York City, worked at some of the major fiction houses and some of the major general interest magazines. And his wife was getting rid of a lot of books. And I, you know, inspected the house and what we more or less determined was that her husband had been an incredible reader. He bought most of his books used. Even though he was a prominent guy, knew a lot of famous people. he didn't have a lot of valuable books. A couple other book dealers came in and said, "You know what? Not even worth my time to really go through this. These are all mostly thumb paperbacks and very well read and loved books. Donate them all." I gave it a final look. I made a small pile of books. I offered to buy them at what I thought was a fair market price, and we transacted. It's a couple thousand dollars for maybe two boxes of books. But the at the very last moment this widow said, "You know what? Here, take this one. I'm so sorry. The cover has fallen off and it's falling apart. but I think it's interesting and maybe you can do something with it." And I said, "Oh, okay." And so I just put it on top of the pile. You know, I thought I was being polite. I didn't think I was doing anything important in that moment. But, you know, when I finally got around to looking at this pile of books I bought, you know, I found this thing and it's a type script for a play and it's a play that I had never heard of before. It's called The Poker Night, but I'd heard of the author Tennessee Williams and what it turned out to be was a early draft of the play which gets better known as Streetcar Named Desire.

16:50 So, this is precursor to Streetcar Named Desire. Wow. I've done research on this. This thing called Poker Night is probably one of four existing copies of the original script to the original version of the play that is now known as Streetcar before the movie, before the Broadway show, before any of it. I recently had a conversation with that widow and I said, you know, thank you for those books that I was able to purchase for you. There's some good ones in there. I'll take them to the next rare book show and I'll make a little bit of money back. But the thing that you gave me, well, I had the cover reattached. I had it professionally appraised and repaired and I believe conservatively that it has a value of approximately $50,000. So, we're going to talk about that. I'm bringing that back to the family. Wow. I am not pocketing that one. That's that would be against the code of ethics of the ABAA. So, this is perfect case where I'm saying, you know, either you keep it as a treasured to be treasured family heirloom, probably the most valuable thing in your house. and you know, I would say, you know, if you ever want to sell it, please bring it to me and I will you find the best client for it and I will take a commission. but you know that's a case of something hiding in plain sight that was actually probably bound for the dumpster if not the recycling bin if not you know the Goodwill if she hadn't just picked it up off the floor and t you know popped it onto you know my crate of books that I was buying for a few thousand dollar and somebody who's gonna buy it from you down the road if and when that comes is gonna love it. I mean there are people who it's an iconic movie and play and author and I think I'm trying to think the star of the movie was Brand Marlon Brand a classic scene it's considered to be the most important American play of the 20th century play and then and then is also you know a

18:53 Popular movie and so there's somebody who saw it did it in high school whatever and it's like important to their life and that will be one of the treasure momentos in their life and that's why people pay for those things and that you might say that's kind of silly. Why would you do that? Well, but to that person it's very valuable and well and I'll tell you what's even more valuable about it in this case because it is such a rare first draft. You remember I was talking first drafts. So it's not just going to be a collector could be a collector but it's probably going to be a professor and a librarian and their graduate students who want to know about the history of American theater. So, this is history. And that's when I'm talking about archives and manuscripts. And, you know, there might be a shoe box of folders with letters, you know, people you never heard of sitting under your loved one's bed, and that could be the most valuable thing in the entire collection. Yeah. Forget about the, you know, the, you know, the kind of crappy painting from Mexico. Forget about this that, you know, forget about the, you know, the little bronze on the desk. It might be that shoe box of letters depending on their research value because these research institutions are different from collectors who are interested in collectibles. You know that's why when you want to look at somebody's manuscripts and letters when I say manuscript what I might mean is you know a typed piece of paper with a lot of scribbling on it doesn't look like much but you know I'll give you another example. I was just at the Minneapolis St. Paul airport flying home flying back from you know my where my parents live to Brooklyn and I saw at the Prince store they've got a Prince memorabilia and merch shop at MS airport. It's so cool. If you love Purple Rain, get in there, buy a buy a you know a sweatshirt, buy a t-shirt.

20:45 What they have there also is incredibly cool scraps of notebook paper under thick plexiglass inside vitrines. You have the original scribbled out lyrics crossed out looked at rewritten for songs like Ballad of Dorothy Parker or 1999. Those are priceless. Yeah. And you know another estate that I was talking to recently you know their dad was a journalist. happened to know Bob Dylan, happened to know Lou Reed and all these people, you know, he wanted me to get involved and go through all these papers in New Jersey in commercial storage. Dad was a packrat, kept everything. And I said, you know what? Actually, in this case, I probably can't get involved, but you should go through it. Especially if you know that your dad had a good friendship with Bob Dylan. Look for things that could be lyrics. Look for things that could be, you know, notes or postcards even because those will have value. They did. And they recently sold at auction the original lyrics to Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man over $500,000. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, note to self, look through look to my customers, look through the box, and just double check before you throw it away if you're if you're a parent. And there are people that, you know, I'm in LA, so we have people who are attorneys and you know, maybe had a client who was very young at the time. to them.

22:10 They didn't really pay much attention who went on to be somebody big or had one minor transaction but has a signature of somebody on there. So, you know, and you're in LA and you know, and I work with USC and UCLA and the Getty all the time and they are buying research collections. They're not buying collectibles. Collectors buy collect collectibles. Universities buy research materials that help historians write the draft of American history, American culture. How did the world get the way it is now? You know, maybe somebody was publishing a little newsletter in their basement that helped change the world. You know, in California, I work a lot with members of the Chuco community in Sacramento, and these are people you know, who helped establish the United Farm Workers Movement, you know, respect and dignity for the people who are picking your groceries out in the field, right? Incredibly important American history. I can work with some of those individuals, take graphic art, take newsletters, little stapled pamphlets, you know, things that might look just like a like a just a little, you know, a little handmade magazine. I can take that to a library and sell it for a very good price. A brochure from an event where speaker happened to be Caesar Chavez when he was exactly young and wasn't I mean even the headline or something.

23:33 So some of these things it takes a collector to really understand what they're looking for. Yeah. Well, look, obviously Arthur, the depth of research and history goes really deep. We can go really long. I really app it took I've kept you a little longer than we had planned on. I really appreciate your time. Right. Now, I know that you are involved with the associations are national. is your business, but I imagine it's physical. So, somebody who has these things in the New York area should reach out to you. And then people worldwide reach out to me. I just came back from Paris. I was working on the papers of a very important artist and rock and roll empressario and those papers are being exported back to the United States for purch for a six figure sum. I work in Texas, I work in California, I work in Minnesota, I have associates all over the country. I'm one of the top experts in this range of work. and I also do buy and sell rare books, rare collectibles. So, I don't want to, you know, I feel like I've been, you know, putting a lot more emphasis on the on the archival manuscript side of my work today in our conversation because it's unusual. It's interesting. But I also help libraries and help collectors buy really wonderful books, really wonderful copies of well-known books, magazines. You know, if you have a complete set of a important and interesting magazine, even if it was just four issues of a little poetry journal or, you know, 10 issues of an art magazine or a music magazine. Here's a great one. Since you're in California, I'll show you something kind of cool.

25:20 Have you ever heard of Low Rider? No. I mean, I've heard Low Riders, but not Low Rider. Low Rider. There's a magazine made by members of the California Chico kind of, you know, culture movement, right? My neighbors. I mean I grew I grew up in La Habra on Weirder Boulevard where the low rider I think started playing Bob's Big Boy up and down we boulevard in Oh yeah Boulevard and Selenus Sacramento. So this was a really important magazine in the visibility and pride of Latino people in California and car culture was a big part of that and you know the pride to be a worker to be able to afford a beautiful car and to make it even more beautiful, make it special, make sure people would notice you when you're driving down the street. That was kind of, you know, just this beautiful romantic pride of being in the low rider movement. this magazine, the first 10 issues, which I have I've actually got the first 15 issues in very good condition right in front of me. And I've been putting these together for a while. I just got the last number that I was missing from that sequence. This will be something that I will sell as a group hopefully to a museum or library that wants to know about Chuco history in the United States. They won't have this. Almost no one has this. I should be able to sell it for around $7,500 my wow. So, you know, again, you know, you might see, you know, what's that corn car magazine, you know, hanging out? Why, you know, it almost looks like they wrote it by hand. Who are these people? Well, you know, they are they are proud and cool and important and you know, they made some things without being experts. They made a magazine and now that magazine went on, you know, to like worldwide importance after about the 30th issue.

27:13 Low rider blew up nationally, helped people understand how cool Chuco culture was. It was a major cultural force. So the Smithsonian Museum, the Getty Museum, USC, New York Public Library, they'll all want to know about this. Yeah. And you know, one of them will go home with it after my next big book fair. Wow. Wow. So, I'll be showing at the Park Avenue Armory during the New York Antiquarian Book Fairfare, the New York International Antiquarian Book Fairf Avenue Armory at Park and 6768. and that show opens on April 3rd. It goes through April 6th. It is the largest and most important rare book fair in the world. Yeah. dealers, approximately 200 dealers from at least four continents, maybe five continents will be there. And we barter and trade amongst ourselves and then we sell to museum professionals. We also sell to the very highest tier of collectors in the world at that book fair. And I will have a booth there. People can come and see me. If they want to find me, they can just look me up. Arthur Fournier Fine and Rare LLC. They'll be in the directory there. I can't really remember my booth number off hand, but I'm toward the front of the fair. I'm going to be interested in meeting you if you have materials like these, if you've got rare books, if you've got rare magazines, if you've got things that you think were the first draft of history, come and talk to me about them.

28:48 Arthur, it's amazing the depth of your knowledge and experience in this area. I really appreciate you taking time with us today. Again, Arthur Fournier Fine and Rare LLC phone number [phone number]. The website arthurfournier.com and we have a picture of the website right here somewhere. That's the ABAA website there. Here, that's where I am. Yeah. And again, you just see some things on there, you're like, you know, are any of those really valuable? Yes, they are. Those underground magazines. That's kind of how I got my start. I'll probably update my website soon to make it a little more slick and maybe a little bit more about the manuscripts as opposed to, you know, that underground paper. But there's a good text right there about me and what I do and some of the projects I've worked on in the last couple of years. Like I said, I've worked with Library of Congress, with New York Public Library, with Getty, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on and on. So, those are my clients. If you have things that ought to go to a library or museum, but you can't really figure out how to do that, call me. I'll I'll help you one way or another. Fantastic. Arthur, thank you so much for your time, Dave. really appreciate it and continued success. Look forward to hearing more from you down the road. Thank you, Bill. And for the rest of us, again, this is the Executorium podcast. We get together every week and bring in professionals that can help executors with their task of maximizing the value of estates and the efficiency of getting that done. this Executorium is the resource Executorium.com. And if you go to the website, there's four main tiles in the front page. directory of providers, directory of government resources.

30:34 Fantastic for forums for state, local, and also some great learning articles and learning tabs as well. If you go to the directory, and you click in, Kings County, New York, you're going to pop up various vendors in your individual county. And if you scroll down to Wanted, there's Arthur Fournier Fine and LLC. And then, his listing, you can click on it and get that. For any other vendors, feel free to make sure that you have your listing. make sure it's up to date. You get one free listing one in one county for free and then if you want to be in multiple counties, there's advertising packages and such. So again, a powerful tool that we want to promote and we want to help executors be more effective in their job. Again, thank you for joining us today. I'm Bill Gross at Bill Gross Probate. if I can help any way, please reach out.