Lance Casebeer Books

One of my biggest regrets as a vintage paperback collector is that I never got the chance to meet Lance Casebeer. Perhaps he's grown to be a larger figurehead now that he's gone, but talking to people who have met him, I think that maybe he was "bigger than life" even in life. Everyone seems to have a story to tell, and whenever I read about him, he always seems to pick up a moniker such as "Legendary" or "The Godfather of Vintage Paperback Collectors." Click the link below for a typical "Lance story," as related in Lynn Munroe's web site:

http://lynnmunroebooks.tripod.com/prev_intro.htm

One thing's for sure, Casebeer had one of the largest vintage paperback collections in the world. After his death in 2003, this collection was broken up, and as odd as it seems, books that were once a part of that collection have become collectible themselves, at least in part because people can say they were once his. (I picked up this book at Green Lion Books in St. Paul. The sticker is on the book's protective polypropylene bag.) The books seem, for the most part, to be in remarkably nice condition. But Casebeer had a little quirk that, as far as I've seen, has never been duplicated by any other collector. He would use colored markers to "touch up" the spines of books in an effort to hide (or at least mute) spine creasing.  I would certainly never do that. But then, who am I to argue with a legend?