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And that's the UNSIGNED price.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/ ... 91640.asp?from=blog_last3



A Bibliomaniac Amok

Seattle Pi

He owes $14,000 in back rent, has $14 to his name, he's been out of work for two years, his landlord is evicting him, he agrees he should be tossed. He's got a rare book collection of 3,000 books worth, by his estimate, $1,000,000. What's wrong with this picture?

Irving Leif, 62, the Jersey City citizen whose story hit the Jersey papers the other day, we learn, is a graybeard trust-fund baby. Disbursements to him supplemented his income as Chief Information Officer for the state of New York's Department of Banking.

The chief missed, evidently, the info on banking and money.

Anytime a book collector is faced with a financial crisis the question arises, Should I sell my books? And most collectors will do anything they can to avoid deascensions for dollars or any other reason, particularly if, as Leif, you've spent forty years amassing the collection and insist that it be kept intact.

I have experienced a similar situation. The period 1988-1999 was one of great difficulty and there were times when I had to consider selling my books. It was a wrenching decision - and my collection was no where near the size or value of Leif's. I resisted, muddling along somehow, finding money someplace else, or just letting debt slide as I hunkered down in my house of books. The books comforted me; they were my friends. I think I also had the inchoate sense that to sell was to admit failure, not as a collector but as an adult. My self-worth was directly tied to the collection.

But there comes a time, and it came for me, when an extremely cold shower and hard slap are necessary to awaken dormant reality. The books have to go. It was, without over-dramatizing the situation, one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make. I made it and began to sell off, a few books at a time, the whole of my collection to a dealer I knew and trusted, William Dailey.


And then the most amazing thing happened: My life opened up. It was as if I had been clinging to a sinking rock to keep it (and myself) afloat. When I let go, I rose to the surface, alive and able to breathe.

I've become superstitious about establishing a new collection; I don't want to mess with karma. The comfort I feel amongst rare and antiquarian books is satisfied by my work in the trade; I'm surrounded by them. every day. I don't need to own them.

I know what Irving Leif is going through. But he has to go all the way through, sell some if not all of his books, and get on with his life before the books completely consume him. He is where no book collector should ever be: In that dark, fragile space where the Gentle Madness of book collecting that Nicholas Basbanes has written so well about gets overwhelmed out by full-blown bibliomania.

A potentially homeless person, dead broke yet with $1,000,000 worth of books. This is a psychopathology that needs to be addressed. Mr. Leif has the sympathy of book collectors all over the world; this is a very sad story. But only up to a point.

Mr. Leif could have been saving his trust fund money and living off his income. He could have carefully sold off some of his books when things began to get tight, rather than wait until crisis threatened all. In this, or any, economy, a 62 year-old out of work person faces a rough road toward another job. Downward employment mobility is no party but the world will not come to an end.

There is nothing noble about saving one's book collection at all costs. We admire the fool for love but not the idiot.

Something here is not as it seems.

First off, Lefrak will not countenance a 2 month arrears, much less 8 months.
Secondly, I know the guy slightly and never saw him go to work. I realize there's the catch-all though...works from home, yeah right. He NEVER spoke with anyone.

He's gone now. I hear he went to Minnesota WITH all his books, all 100 boxes going with him.

I kind of agree with the Collyer Brothers analogy here.

I wonder how he arranged the move with only $14?

I wish him well and hope he finds a Starbucks he likes. Yep, that's where he read his books every day...at $3 a cup. His Junior 2 at Newport was one of the nicest apartments at Newport, albeit with no real view of anything.

To sum him up in a word it would be "eccentric."

I wonder what his motive was in having his story in print...and I hear also on the TV news. To sell the books? Sympathy? A grant from generous benefactor?

Some people can afford one of two things a place to live or a whole bunch of junk he opted for a whole bunch of junk.
I am all for books and I applaud his collection efforts however he didn't budget for his rent.

The guy lived rent free almost 8 months, and got some publicity for his collection.

Honestly, my landlord would kick us out within a month if we didn't pay rent.

Substitute classic cars for books. Would the story be the same? The guy put all his money into assets and won't sell any of them. He has a "get out of jail" card and chooses not to use it. So whether or not there is mental illness involved is a reasonable question.

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He has a million dollar collection, and yet won't sell any to save his living situation. He's the one who agreed to be interviewed, so yea, we can judge him.

I agree with Post #2.

Jeez, you guys are pretty judgmental. Someone is losing their home and all you can talk about is whether he's mentally ill or just a second-rate book collector?

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Christ, you're an idiot. I really hope the "law" part of your name does not mean you are a lawyer.

But I do smell a fish in this story. Being a book collector myself, this guy seems like the most unsophisticated collector I've heard of. And the whole job thing sounds weird too.

Also: note to Jersey Journal, Don't talk to Bauman Books. They exist solely to sell books to Madison Avenue dilettantes and no one in the trade respects them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers

This is trademark mental illness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

Well, I guess he's chosen what's important to him.

Something doesn't smell right.

If $200K was invested in one fund, there must be millions invested elsewhere.

If the books are valuable, it would be easy to loan them to a library under the terms that they be kept together.

If he had a job as CIO, he can surely get a well-paying job in a week.

How can he not know or find someone with the space to set up/fill out a library in their house?

It would cost almost nothing to keep them in storage. But then no one gets to see them.

Surely there must be some books that can be sold that don't really break up the collection, beyond the value of having the entire "Irving Leif" collection.

Sounds like at least some are out of copyright. Why not use his technical skill/contacts to have them scanned, and see if a few dollars can be made selling copies?

Why is he 62, recently working as a CIO, with $200k to invest in a single fund, and still renting his residence?

This can't be the whole story. Sounds like some mental illness may be involved.

Rare books collector, Irving Leif of Jersey City, faces eviction

By Ron Zeitlinger/The Jersey Journal
January 17, 2010, 1:50PM



Irving Leif, 62, of Jersey City, is a rare books collector who is now facing eviction from his home.

In terms of rare books, Irving Leif says he's a millionaire. In terms of real dollars, the soon-to-be-evicted Jersey City man is more like a 14-dollar-aire.

"I have $14 to my name. That's it," said Leif, who is scheduled to be evicted from his 1,892-a-month apartment in Downtown Jersey City on Wednesday. "I don't even have a phone."

What Leif has is what he calls a million-dollar collection of more than 3,000 rare books, manuscripts and letters.

Among the rare items are "two of three known copies of first-edition Horatio Alger books in original 1890s dust jackets, signed copies of some of Jack Kerouac's books, the most complete set of the Mother Earth pamphlets published by Emma Goldman and 338 unpublished literary letters written by the renowned American poet Larry Eigner," Leif said.

What he needs is a place to put them when he's forced out. He fears that his landlord will toss out collection that took 40 years to amass.

Leif, 62, of Jersey City, is a rare books collector who is now facing eviction from his home. Here, his collection of first edition G.A. Henty historical fiction for boys.

"I don't care if I live in the street, as long as that collection is saved," said the 62-year-old, who lost his job as chief information officer for the New York Department of Banking in 2007 when Elliot Spitzer took over as governor.

Leif said he had been surviving on a family trust fund, but his family lost "$175,000 to $250,000" in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal. He owes $14,000 in back rent, and agrees that he should be tossed.

"I have no issue with being evicted," Leif said. "It's their right to kick me out. I owe them a lot of money. I don't care about the furniture, I don't care about any of it," he said.

"I only care about the books and the collection. Packed up, it's about 100 boxes. I don't have the money to store it. I don't have anyone who has the room to take it."

Ed Cortese, senior vice president of the LeFrak Organization, which owns the John Adams building, 35 River Dr. South, where Leif lives, said in these cases "a landlord contacts a warehouse storage company and stores the content of an apartment. It's up to the tenant to pay those fees. A person's belongings would not just get thrown out."

Cortese wouldn't speculate on what would happen after that.

By law, a landlord can dispose of a tenant's property only if the landlord believes that the tenant is not coming back and has abandoned the items. In addition, the landlord must give the tenant written notice that he intends to dispose of the property. The notice must give the tenant 30 days after delivery of the landlord's written notice, or 33 days after the notice is mailed, whichever comes first, to claim the property.

"It sounds like a historical collection," said Angel Webster of Bauman Rare Books in Manhattan. "He and the management company should work out something that it is not thrown away."

Leif does not want to sell his collection, but grudgingly admits he may have to sell at least a part of it.

"Knowing my financial situation, people who have made offers that are very low, too low," Leif said. "I don't want to sell to someone who will break it up and sell it. I want it to stay together. It's not that easy to sell rare books. It could take months."

That's time that Leif doesn't have.