One of many moments when I came to appreciate the Internet involved bookfinding. For many years, I carried in my wallet a tattered list of old, outta-print books I craved. Any time I came across an antiquarian bookstore, I'd haul out the list and see if they had a copy of anything on it. Most of the time, I came away empty-handed and often some bookseller would shake his head and utter something to indicate my quest was that of a fool. They always acted like I'd asked for fresh dodo bird meat or something.
Then I found online searches of old bookshops…and the list I'd been carrying around for 20-some-odd-years was filled in about twenty minutes. Amazing.
Bookfinder.com is one of those sites and they've put out a list of the 100 hardest-to-find old books. I have copies of a number of these, including #1. I was curious as to why I Go Pogo is #41 but none of the other fine (and similar) Pogo books by Walt Kelly made the list…but then I realized that apart from Stephen King writing under two different names, no author has more than one. So I think they limited each author to one entry.