SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Workers at thrift stores dig through boxes of donations and occasionally uncover a gem. Olivia Haysman-Walker is the manager of a bookshop on Portobello Road in London that's run by the global charity Oxfam. Thank you so much for being with us.
OLIVIA HAYSMAN-WALKER: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: What did you find?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: It was an antiquarian edition of "To Kill A Mockingbird." And we're always on the lookout for beloved classics that might be valuable. They might be something special. And this one turned out to be a first edition, fourth impression.
SIMON: Wow. And in what kind of condition?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: The book itself was in lovely condition. Pages aren't torn. Pages aren't written in, unblemished. The dust jacket was a little bit torn, which suggests that perhaps it had been a reading copy. Somebody had loved it well and then decided to donate it to us.
SIMON: And did you know immediately this is a pretty rare find?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Yeah. You have an idea in the back of your head. You're always looking for that thing that's going to be really interesting. And "To Kill A Mockingbird" is such an iconic book, and you can find out pretty quickly that it's a first edition. And then we did a little bit of research and kind of narrowed down exactly what it was and what it was worth.
SIMON: Well, forgive me for being so coarse, but what is it worth?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: It depends on the impression. It can go from thousands to tens of thousands of pounds. We're unable to say how much we eventually sold it for, but we're very happy with the price that we got for it.
SIMON: British Library got it, right?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Yeah. They did. Oxfam has an online shop that's open to everybody across the U.K. to browse and buy, and that's where they spotted it. And they called us and said, can we come and have a look at it? Can we verify that it is what we think it is? Then they purchased it from us.
SIMON: "To Kill A Mockingbird," of course, is considered a classic here in the U.S. It's still taught in schools. What's the status in Britain?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Yes - very similar. We study it in high school, as well, so I myself studied it. It's arguably just as beloved. We have a play adaption of it on the West End at the moment, in London, as well. So the city's already thinking about "To Kill A Mockingbird."
SIMON: So is every day an opportunity to uncover another gem there at your bookshop?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Yeah. So how we work is that people just donate books to us, and then we sell them for - to raise money for Oxfam. And particularly, because of the area that we're in and the generosity of our community, we just get the most amazing things. We've had first edition "Lord Of The Rings." We've had early editions of "Alice In Wonderland" - really classic books that we can then send to a new home and raise money for charity at the same time.
SIMON: What kind of feeling do you get when you pluck one of these books?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Excitement. Yeah - the possibility of what it is. There's also a little bit of trepidation. You know, we research everything in the house, so we're the ones deciding - looking at what it's sold for in the past, looking at the condition of the book that we have in our hands at the moment, deciding what to sell it for. And there's always, you know, if it's going to sit on our shelves for the next six months, perhaps we've priced it a little too high. Or if it goes overnight, we know that we perhaps priced it a little too generously. So we try to get the balance.
SIMON: Totally personal question. I collect Graham Greene and V.S. Naipaul. Got any of them on the shelves?
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Yeah. Graham Greene, absolutely. V.S. Naipaul a little spits, but Graham Greene is the staple of our classics shelves.
SIMON: Olivia Haysman-Walker, an Oxfam bookshop manager, of course, in London. Thanks so much for being with us.
HAYSMAN-WALKER: Thank you.
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