Bhavana
\I never got to congratulate Rodney on his tremendous collectors' achievement. I believe I probably speak for many people when I say this deal of the decade couldn't have happened to a nicer tarotist. Well done.
I can't say I've ever had a good tarot bargain. Anything now-sought after that I bought as a first edition was obviously still in print when I bought it, so all those don't count.
I suppose my Herbal Tarot and Sacred Rose tarot, while presumably still in print at the time (and now), were good buys at around $5 each on the Borders bargain table circa the year 2000.
That same year, I also bought a Tarocchi di Alan in Dublin for some gratifyingly low price--like 7 Irish pounds or something at a time when the exchange rate favored Americans. I think it might have been hard to find by then, though not necessarily sought-after (although a rabid collector then, I was not plugged into any formal online collecting communities, so I wouldn't have known such things. And I didn't use Ebay, if it even existed then).
Yes, I'm really digging the bottom of the barrel, here, folks. Such are my paltry "bargains." I question whether true steals are even possible nowadays with all the Ebayers and Amazon Marketplacers and others hiking up their prices to the heavens.
Then I hear about stories like Rodney's...
I suppose to those of us who hang around here a lot, it seems unthinkable that a person--like Rodney's oblivious seller, presumably-- who gets a taste of tarot would not then be sucked more deeply into the wonderful world of decks and collecting. But it must happen. After all, the several people I've met in the offline tarot world who chug along for years with the same one or two decks and never think to go online to research more about tarot history or lore or meanings or DECKS...those types of people exist.
I've met them, so I need to remind myself that they exist and that they often decide to get rid of the small box of old decks they haven't paid any mind to for fifteen years....
We can only hope.
I second all this~ and have to admit, wish I had seen that auction! As for the seller, some people wind up with someone else's decks - either they get them at yard sales, or estate sales, or when someone dies....and sometimes people don't want the hassle of selling things, even if they know they are of some value. They'd rather just get a little something for it and be done with it. Perhaps this was the sellers attitude. Or, they had the decks - and let's face it, none of them were really that old - so maybe it didn't occur to them that they might be valuable. And really, ARE they valuable? Not to everyone....but certainly to us!!