Unexpected Surprise

Not to sound opportunistic or anything, but I like it when other people’s mistakes work to my advantage.

For example, last week I finally bought a copy of a long out of print book by Victor Gruen that I’d been wanting for quite some time. I’d never seen a decent used copy for less than forty or fifty bucks, but this one Amazon seller had one for about twenty. It had an intact dust cover, but the seller noted somewhat apologetically that there was writing inside the front cover from when someone had given the book as a a gift. I think that may be part of why it was priced so low.

As I looked at the book yesterday,  I noticed that the signature looked an awful lot like the name of the author, and that the inscription looked an awful lot like something an author would have written. After a quick Google search or two to verify the signature, I realized that I did in fact have a book signed by one of my favorite commercial architects of the 1950s (the designer of America’s first enclosed shopping mall, among other projects) and at a nice bargain price.