Books. Tauranga Harbour City Lions needs books, lots of books, for its October book fair fundraiser.
'They're much slower coming through this year,” says Lion Christine Currie. 'And we don't know why.” Especially, they would like fiction books, a rollicking good read.
But while quantity is a problem, quality isn't.
A couple of treasures have been spotted by the Lions' book trained eyes during the sorting process.
The treasures were published 64 years ago – two volumes of Laurence Pomeroy's ‘The Grand Prix Car'. They could be worth as much as $700.
The spotter was Glen Pettit, a retired newspaper man with a gut instinct for books. He sorts the rare and valuable for the Lions.
'The illustrations on the dust jackets drew my eye to them and I thought, these books are going to be worth a substantial amount.”
The books are a history of grand prix motor racing from 1906 to 1954. They were written by a prominent motoring and technical journalist called Laurence Evelyn Wood Pomeroy and published in 1954. 'They're beautiful, superb artwork,” says Glenn extending a fold-out diagram of a 1924 Sunbeam. And a 1922 Vauxhall.
You don't have to understand or appreciate vintage racing cars to see these books are quite special. Just inside the front cover the numbers ‘75/6' are penciled – 75 shillings and sixpence, or three pounds 15 shillings and sixpence being the sale price in 1954. That's equivalent to about $7.55.
Glenn did some research and reckons they could fetch between $600 and $700 for the two volumes when they go up for offer at the Harbour City Lions book fair at the Tauranga Racecourse on October 26-28,
'I wasn't surprised at the value, but they were an astonishing find. They will appeal to anyone with an interest in fine books or an interest in grand prix motor racing.”
Books can be dropped off at the Mobile service stations in Cameron Road and Brookfield, Payless Plastics in Cameron Road, and the furniture store Living Quarters at Bethlehem Town Centre.
The Lions would also like jigsaws that people are finished with – they're as popular as a good read.