The Thirstin' Howl

The Howl Jones Price Index

As a collector of old books relating to the application of alcoholic spirits upon the human spirit, I spend a fair amount of time scouring eBay, ABE and Alibris, as well as some of the darker corners of the web. For instance, I recently found a cache of Soule Smith's The Mint Julep, (4th edition) for sale but I'm gonna keep the details to myself, for now. Not only are these sites target rich environments for acquiring things, but they're invaluable for assessing the current values of things already got. EBay is a particularly good resource for valuation-- it's literally the New York Stock Exchange of America's junk.

Here are some recent eBay sales that have caught my eye.

Jerry Thomas 1887 $307.00
This caught my eye for 2 reasons: The price (!) of course and it was mis-identified as "Terry" Thomas in the listing. I'm curious if the price would have been higher without the typo.

George Kappeler "Modern American Drinks"  $161.00
In my 10 or more years on eBay I don't recall ever seeing this book, nor have I seen it on ABE or Alibris. Another pretty bad listing from a seller who most likely had no idea what she had. There were only 60 or so page views for this item, and I know I can account for about 15 of them. Yes, I won it.

Oscar Haimo "Cocktail Digest" 1943  $51.00
I've got a small selection of Haimo's books and this one somehow slipped past me. I thought I had the cat by the whiskers when I scored a Cocktail Digest from 1944, (it would become the Cocktail and Wine Digest in '45) but this is something else altogether. Haimo was one interesting cat, if his autobiography Nothing Lasts Forever is to be believed. After getting rejected by numerous publishers, Haimo self-published the Digest with the proceeds from a cocktail competition. He did all the artwork himself and his is one of the first published recipes for the Moscow Mule that I'm aware.

Bartender's Guide and Song Book $80.00
This is one of those Prohibition era books that jauntily eulogizes the good ol' saloon. It's replete with the recipes found in the demised saloon and the songs that accompanied them. You may have recognized the fellow on the cover: he got "Doctored" up by Ted "Doctor Cocktail" Haigh and was trotted out to help promote a lot of MoTAC 's events and announcements.
The dedication still resonates:
Published in sacred memory of those good old days when bartending was an exact science, and you could forget your troubles on any corner.

Bottoms Up $81.00
This just caught me flat footed.

Ted Saucier's "Bottoms Up" $4.99
Flat footed again. Here's an instance where a book listed in a less than optimum category fell into the hands of a very (very) lucky person. The book isn't valuable, nor is it particularly rare but this copy looks absolutely mint-y and it comes with an equally pristine slip cover. Probably worth $50-$75 but an absolute steal at $5.00!

The Savoy Cocktail Book $405.00
The Savoy Cocktail Book is one of the most collectible cocktail books out there and for a number of good reasons. It's a great resource for the cocktail historian but it's also just a beautiful thing to look at and hold--a true object of the cocktailian arts. This is simply an amazing specimen for a collector. Here we have a 1st edition, in really good condition and it's inscribed by Himself. The famous "Bacardi Cocktail" addendum is intact, and did I mention already that Harry Craddock signed it?