I almost didn’t buy it. That is the part of the story I remember best. It was sitting among the usual things that accumulate wherever old paper is sold: postcards nobody mailed, photographs of unidentified people, church programs, receipts, maps, advertisements, and the occasional document someone has optimistically labeled “VERY OLD.” I picked it up. I put it down. Then I picked it up again. There was nothing particularly impressive about it. No famous signature. No beautifu

There is a strange assumption about rare book dealers: that our job is to find things. It is. But a surprising amount of the job is deciding what not to buy. Almost every week, something lands in my inbox. A box of family papers. A photograph album. A stack of political pamphlets. A scrapbook assembled decades ago. Someone has inherited it, discovered it in an attic, bought it at an estate sale, or simply decided that it is time for it to go. Sometimes I know immediately that

There is a moment in cataloging when I become extremely attached to a fact that I cannot prove. It is almost always a very good fact. The date fits. The names fit. The history fits. Three hours of research have led me directly to it, and by this point I am emotionally invested in its being true. There is only one problem. I can’t prove it. Welcome to one of the less glamorous parts of rare book dealing: deleting the best sentence in the catalog description. Rare books are usu

There is an email I write all the time at Tomberg Rare Books. Dear Curator, I recently acquired a collection that I thought might be of interest to your library... Simple, right? Not exactly. By the time I write those words, I have probably spent days with the collection. I have sorted photographs, deciphered handwriting, searched names, turned postcards over, unfolded papers, followed obscure clues, and fallen down at least three research rabbit holes that had absolutely not

I always tell myself I won't get attached to the next archive. I am almost always wrong. A box arrives at Tomberg Rare Books filled with photographs, letters, programs, postcards, and scraps of paper. At first, it is simply material to be sorted and researched. I approach it with all the professional detachment of a rare book dealer who absolutely knows better. Then I turn over a photograph. There is a name written in pencil. I look up the name. The name leads to an address.

One of the first things I notice when I pick up a piece of ephemera isn't what it says. It's how it folds. That probably sounds like something only a rare book dealer would say, and I suppose that's fair. Most people unfold an old flyer, smooth it flat, and immediately start reading. I do eventually. But first I look at the creases. Because folds are evidence. A broadside folded into eighths wasn't hanging proudly on a wall. It was carried in someone's coat pocket. A politica

I'm sitting at my gate in the Orlando airport as I write this, waiting to board a flight home to Connecticut. Most people heading home are probably thinking about seeing family, catching up with old friends, or enjoying a favorite meal they can't get anywhere else. I'm looking forward to all of those things. There's nothing quite like Connecticut pizza, and there are people I can't wait to hug. But if I'm being completely honest, there are two other stops already penciled int

One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “What’s the most valuable thing you’ve ever found?” People usually expect something cinematic in return: a famous signature, a rare broadside, a lost letter from someone who really ought not to have lost anything at all. And yes, those things exist, and they are genuinely thrilling. But after years working with archives, I’ve learned a less dramatic truth: the most valuable item is often the one that refuses to announce itself. It

Most people do not expect history to look flimsy. History, in our collective imagination, arrives leather-bound. Heavy. Respectable. It smells faintly of dust and seriousness. Ideally, it lives behind glass somewhere with a curator standing nearby to remind you not to breathe too aggressively. But some of the most revealing historical artifacts I encounter as a rare book dealer begin life as paper no one intended to save. A protest flyer.
 A church handbill. 
A folded program

People imagine rare book dealers living in candlelit libraries, gently turning the pages of priceless books while sipping tea and murmuring things like, “Ah yes, the 1798 issue.” I regret to report this is only true about six percent of the time. The other ninety-four percent involves coffee, cardboard boxes, frantic research, and the occasional moment of despair when you realize someone stored a nineteenth-century broadside in conditions best described as aggressively damp.