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17 Dec, 2007
2007-12-17 10:33:43 AM UTC
This is fun thread... I have bought some very unusual items in the past which are always fun to talk about.

For example, I went to an event which sold old posters, postcards, stamps, and such and when looking through a box of postcards from South-Afrika (looking if I could find an image of the bank in Bloemfontein) I found a postcard with authograph by Arthur Tolkien which was sent to England some days before he died. Incredible find and for only 2 euro I believe it was like winning the lottery.

Another amazing story is when I went to England in 1991 or 1992 and went inside the oxfam store in Oxford in the same street as the Bird & Baby and found a 1st edition of The Hobbit signed by J.R.R. Tolkien. Don't know how it ended up there but I bought it for some pounds!

Something I picked up from ebay is also quit unusual... namely an original photograph from Exeter College 1914, which was used for John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War.

There are some other very unusual items, but as for now I believe these are the most interesting.

1 Jan, 2008
2008-1-1 2:20:03 PM UTC
I'm not a Tolkien fan per se.

I picked up a book for $4AUS at an antique shop in Rockingham, Western Australia where I live.

The book is 'Nova et Vetera' by ex-communicated, former Jesuit preist, George Tyrrell and was first published in 1897.

I am a practising Catholic and was quite excited about such a find however, further discovery has led me to post this message .

In the inside cover of the book is a coat of arms with several words that are unfamiliar to me (in Latin).

'Franciscus Morgan et Osborne' and 'Edgbaston' were easy enough to decipher as proper nouns that I could look up on Google.

On the next page, in faded fountain pen, 'Francis Morgan 1907' is written and then a word which looks like "theoratoby".

So I looked up 'Edgbaston' and one of the sites I found was the home page of The Birmingham Oratory. I looked up "Francis Morgan" and found the following page:

http://www.birmingham-oratory.org.uk/tolkien/

It might seem like a very slight thing but to me, it is fascinating to think that the book sitting next to me on my desk was once read by a) Fr Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory (of John Henry Newman fame) and b) by the legal guardian of J R R Tolkien.

As a consequence of my petty research detailed above, I have come to read a lot more about Tolkien than I ever expected to in my lifetime and have been fascinated with his personal history.

Indeed, a fortunate find!
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