Hello all! Epic first post here! My name is Josh and I am returning to magic after several years off. It's a slow process as my career and family often get in the way, but I'm doing what I can.
As I was going through my effects, books, etc.... I found an old copy of The Expert at the Card Table. Researching online it seems this isn't a 1st edition but may be one of the earlier versions. Can anyone elaborate for me? I can't seem to find much more online and Google Images doesn't return much close to what I have.
Thanks for any help you guys can provide, I look forward to shaking rust off!
A decent source for getting an idea about the value of an old book is Abe Books which can be found online. Understand, though, that the values listed are what the sellers think they can expect to sell a book for which is not necessarily what you might expect to get for a copy that you own (I have used abebooks.com to acquire a first edition of Frank Garcia's TheEncyclopedia of Spongeball Magic). Here is the AbeBooks link for Erdnase filtered by high to low value:
As to the pedigree of your copy...a decent publication history of the Erdnase book may be found in the appendix of Darwin Ortiz's The Annotated Erdnase. Ortiz says that the first edition was published by the author in 1902 and printed J. McKinney and Co. in Chicago. He goes on to say that in 1903 the printing plates for the book were bought by Frederick J. Drake and Co. which then issued cloth and paperback editions.
Your edition may be one of those. I would hold on to it.
