funklord9's Journal: At Used-Book Stores, Unintended Mysteries Are Often the Best

Used books often gain value from forgotten paper -- paper money, for example; the Strand's staff rakes in lots of that. They haven't yet found a "hell scene with fish monster," as Cristiana Romelli did two years ago at Sotheby's in London. The original Hieronymus Bosch sketch fell out of a client's old picture album and sold for $276,000. A few years earlier, her colleague Julien Stock found a Michelangelo stuck in a 19th-century scrap book. In 2001, that one brought its owner $12 million.

The Strand did buy a $15 doodled-over book of drawings by the Renaissance artist Ucello. The doodler was Salvador Dali. Fred Bass, the Strand's owner, once opened a book titled "The Bill of Rights" to find it was hollowed out. The bottom of the inside was signed, "Boo! Abbie Hoffman." Mr. Bass says he learned later from Mr. Hoffman that he had hidden a tape recorder in there during the Chicago Seven trial.

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