CH3MB6RP9T & M2TH5RF8CK

Mentioning a price-code in a recent post, I realised that I have not yet mentioned on this blog that there is a now a second edition, much expanded, published last year, of of The Price-Codes of the Book-Trade, whose first edition (2010) I described here.

At an eye-watering $175 for a 90-page octavo I doubt that many readers of this blog will buy their own copy, but it may be worth finding out where a library copy can be consulted. Worldcat lists about 20 copies in the US, 3 in the UK, one in Canada and one in Australia. There are certainly others in research libraries; in London, the Warburg Institute has a copy, for example.

Here are a few images to give a flavour of the contents (as usual, click the images to enlarge and make the text readable). From the Introduction:

From the main body of the book:

From the Afterword:

And here are the full title-page details (the choice of title was not mine):

Cuttings at the Free Library, From "The Property of a Gentleman" in 1923

[Source]

Looking recently in a Sotheby's catalogue from 26 March 1923, and two following days, I realised that the present whereabouts of a large number of cuttings could be identified quite easily. This provides a nice example of how a single solid clue can be pursued to reveal a great deal more.

The clue in this case is the description of some distinctive iconography.