Grass Bag

[G]

For some reason, I have become deeply infatuated with book collecting. My personal library is not that large, but I have read a copious number of books and articles of late about people who purchase first editions as investment and for the joy of collecting.

Last night, I checked out some of the New York city rare books shops online, and discovered a few things. For example, I discovered that it is possible to purchase a first edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird if I had $17,000 sitting in a cookie jar. And I also discovered that the original printing of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was less than 1000 copies. A first edition (like the one pictured here) is available for a mere $175,000.

I'd buy it today if I could resell it to some other sucker for $200,000 the following week.

Anyone out there want to buy a $200,000 first edition of Leaves of Grass from a recently divested pastor who just sold his junk cars, cashed out his cracked walnut farm, and melted down the dental filings he pried from his molars with a pair of rusty needle-nosed pliers?