Several years ago we were brought in on a project in the North Seattle area by a realtor working with a family to put their home on the market. They were downsizing and moving into an assisted living community. The home was your typical split level with the homeowners items in the upstairs; antiques, everyday household items, donation items and such. The downstairs was a much different story.
When you walked downstairs into the basement there were multilple rooms. Each room was stacked from floor to ceiling with banana boxes full of books. There were walking paths between many of the stacks with multiple rows in each room. You would go from one room to the other and it was the same thing; thousands of books in banana boxes. At one point, we counted about 1200 banana boxes....
Too make the project a little more challenging, there wasn't easy access around the outside of the house. Every box would need to be moved up a flight of stairs and out the front door. Okay, not the end of the world but still a massive project.
Of course, we assume these books would need to be donated; if possible. Well, that wasn't what the client had in mind. He wanted us to move every box of books to a local storage space. He wanted to go thru each and every box and pull out books he wanted to keep. There was one book in particular that he was look for. That is correct, out of 1200 boxes and thousands of books he was looking for one specifically.
So we moved the books. I have never felt so sorry for a group of movers in my life. These guys hiked box after box of books up the stairs, loaded them onto trucks, drove to the storage facility and unpacked them into three large storage lockers. We created a work space where the client could bring a box of books at a time and review the contents before taking them to donation on his own.
It was about a year later that I spoke with the realtor. I was curious to know what happened with all of those books. Apparently the client found what he was looking for. It was a rare 1937 German book called the “Gauleiter” edition and is the singular most sought-after book from the period. Production numbers are not known, but the print run is presumably in the 50-edition range; most experts do agree that only 50 were ever produced.
I was told by the realtor that the client sold that one book for $25,000 to a collector who flew up from California to personally collect the book and bring it home. I always caution people about putting items into storage. I guess in this instance it paid off for the client.