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- Rare Books L.A. transformed Union Station into a bustling fair where more than 50 antiquarian booksellers showcased literary treasures and collectibles.
- Items ranged from a $225,000 first edition of “Harry Potter” with typos to Los Angeles’ first phonebook from 1882, listing just 90 numbers.
- Other finds included letters written to a cat by Agatha Christie and Julia Child (tricked into doing so by the cat’s self-described butler).
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A dog-eared punk zine flutters near a vellum-bound folio. An out-of-print tome sits beside a scribbled screenplay. This last weekend, Rare Books L.A. transformed Union Station’s historic ticket hall into a bustling biblio-bazaar, drawing more than 50 antiquarian booksellers and collectors from across the country.
Some came hunting for rare investment pieces, others simply to hold history in their hands. Twice a year, the fair celebrates printed treasures in all their collectible forms — with the next event set for February in Pasadena.
Visitors crowd Rare Books L.A. at Union Station on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025.
(William Liang/For The Times)
We wandered the sold-out aisles and asked sellers what might make readers do a double-take. Here’s what turned our heads.
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‘Harry Potter’ original, typos and all
The first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was on sale for $225,000.
(William Liang / For The Times)
The back of a first edition “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” has a typo in “philosopher.”
(William Liang / For The Times)
Among the fair’s big-ticket items was a rare first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” — J.K. Rowling’s 1997 debut— offered at an eye-watering $225,000. “For books printed in the last 30 years, there’s Harry Potter, and then there’s everything else,” said Pasadena dealer Dan Whitmore. “It stands in a kind of a category of its own.” This particular copy is one of just 500 from the first hardcover printing in the U.K. Half of those went to libraries, Whitmore said, making them far less desirable to collectors. And then there are the typos: a duplicated “1 wand” on Page 51 and a misspelling on the back cover, where the title appears as “Philospher’s Stone.”
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L.A.’s first phonebook
This 1882 L.A. phonebook includes just 90 names.
(William Liang / For The Times)
On April 3, 1882, the city permitted the Los Angeles Telephone Co. to string lines within city limits. A week later, L.A. printed its first phone book. Most early directories were tossed once a new one arrived, but Peter Harrington Rare Books has a rare surviving copy, titled “Los Angeles Telephone Book (1882),” priced around $13,000.
The single, folded sheet lists just 90 names, mostly businesses near historic downtown such as liveries, saloons, physicians, mills, druggists and the local undertaker. Included are instructions for calling the central office, along with one- and two-digit numbers for USC’s first president, M.M. Bovard (dial “58”), and the Los Angeles Club (dial “38”). Seen at auction only twice in modern records, the directory is a rare piece of early Californiana — as much a record of the city’s earliest telecommunications as a social snapshot of fin de siècle Los Angeles.
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Celebrity letters — to a cat
A letter from T.S. Eliot to Dr. Absalom Minola, a cat.
(William Liang / For The Times)
In the 1950s and ’60s, a literary-minded cat named Dr. Absalom Minola — writing via his “butler,” future UC Berkeley archivist Jim Kantor — began sending letters to authors, editors and public figures. The joke? No one knew they were corresponding with a feline. And they wrote back.
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T.S. Eliot — no stranger to feline alter egos — responded earnestly to a poetic quibble. Julia Child offered tips for speeding up custard. Joyce Carol Oates was grateful someone was reading her books. Agatha Christie graciously engaged with a critique involving the word “vole.” There are letters from Buckingham Palace, Dwight Eisenhower and Dow Chemical (which mailed Minola a replacement for a box of defective plastic wrap). The binder, offered by Kate Mitas, Bookseller for $5,000, contains 74 pieces of correspondence — epistolary catfishing at its finest and one of the great undiscovered literary hoaxes of the 20th century.
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Ecotage at 50
“The Monkey Wrench Gang” by Edward Abbey is about eco-saboteurs.
(William Liang / For The Times)
Ken Sanders is something of a folk hero in the antiquarian world: a notorious book-thief hunter, founding member of Earth First! Foundation, a conservation nonprofit, and “Antiques Roadshow” appraiser. Based in Salt Lake City, he’s long championed outlaw writers, western Americana and literary misfits — none more so than his late friend, Edward Abbey. In 1985, he commissioned an R. Crumb-illustrated edition of “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Abbey’s cult novel about a ragtag crew of eco-saboteurs waging war on bulldozers, dams and the American West’s development boom.
Now, marking 50 years both in the trade and of “Monkey Wrench,” Sanders has released a $300 deluxe commemorative box set. He called Abbey’s novel “relevant as ever,” both a love letter to America and a sharp meditation on the morality of violence — especially when aimed at the systems and machinery of power.
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Salvador Dalí‘s Wonderland
The deluxe edition of Salvador Dalí’s version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” as seen at Rare Books L.A.
(William Liang / For The Times)
Salvador Dalí’s reimagining of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” includes sinister-looking playing cards.
(William Liang / For The Times)
In 1969, Salvador Dalí sent Alice on a psychedelic trip. His surrealist reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s Victorian children’s novel, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” distorts the nonsense and whimsy: melting clocks and anxious White Rabbits, sinister playing cards and caterpillars on mushrooms. Through it all, a rope-skipping Alice cuts across each lush chapter like a hallucination in motion. This deluxe edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — from David Brass Rare Books in Calabasas for $19,500 — is one of just 200, signed in pencil by Dalí and among a small handful marked hors commerce, meaning it was reserved for the publisher and close collaborators.
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“¡Viva Zapata!”
A poster with the image of Emiliano Zapata reimagined as a mascot for the farmworkers’ movement, thought to have been hung up in a field office or waved at a protest.
(William Liang / For The Times)
A striking 1970s poster from Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Press features Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata — rifle in one hand, sword in the other — reimagined as a mascot for California’s United Farm Workers. Printed on heavy stock in Delano, Calif., where the UFW was headquartered, the poster shows pinholes in its corners and chipped edges — suggesting it was once tacked up in a field office or waved at a protest. “It’s a fairly scarce piece,” said bookseller Teri Osborn. “And it’s definitely relevant to the spirit of the moment, everything we’ve just seen in the last 10 months.” One copy is held by the University of Michigan, though few others appear in institutional collections. Priced at $950.
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Early lottery scratchers
Unused Scratchers from the California lottery’s first years.
(William Liang / For The Times)
The California State Lottery debuted in 1985 at one dollar apiece with a $1-million jackpot. Biblioctopus has a rare, complete set of all 40 Scratchers from the lotto’s first five years. It’s the first collection of its kind, according to Jennefer Hime, whose father and the bookshop’s founder, Mark Hime, assembled the set out of pure collector’s instinct. “That’s just how his brain worked,” she says of his keen eye that transformed everyday ephemera into a valuable historical archive. California’s early Scratchers represent a unique chapter in gambling history, showcasing the era’s design, themes and prizes throughout those formative years. Framed together, they’d be a stunning display for any lotto aficionado.
This fall, check out these noteworthy British mysteries from Richard Osman, Elizabeth George, Ann Cleeves and Charles Finch.
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A cigarette machine, but for books
A vintage cigarette machine was converted into a book dispenser at Rare Books L.A.
(William Liang / For The Times)
Mister F., a foldable book with nods to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” was dispensed from a converted cigarette machine at Rare Books L.A.
(William Liang / For The Times)
If this year’s Rare Books L.A. had an unofficial theme, it was Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Netflix partnered with the fair and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles to help promote Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel, in select theaters Oct. 17. Many editions of “Frankenstein” were on display, including a 1934 cult favorite from illustrator Lynd Ward, often credited as the precursor of the graphic novel. But a delightfully unexpected tribute came courtesy of Johnson Rare Books & Archives (Covina, Calif.), who brought a repurposed Art Deco cigarette machine to vend “Mister F.,” a letterpress mini-book with quotes from “Frankenstein” and illustrations by Angel Bomb’s Todd Thyberg. The accordion-style booklet is small by design, but the machine is a fitting retro-futurist tribute to Shelley’s enduring monster.
