Visit To Read Heeler Bookshop, Echuca

My parents love visiting Echuca.  The historic town is located on the Murray River and is an easy three hour drive from Melbourne.

The town has a rich history and one major draw card are the many paddle steamers that take tourists along the Murray, cruising the border between Victoria and New South Wales.

The town has several antique stores that sell books, as well as the Read Heeler Bookshop.   Full credit to David, the owner of this bookshop, because his store seems to constantly turnover stock, including James Bond novels.

As usual my parents visited this store last week and sent me the following photos:

A book club edition of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" with a really nice dust jacket

Two Triad Girls On Guns covers and a Pan White Series

A first edition Jonathan Cape "Octopussy" unfortunately minus it's dust jacket

And finally another book club edition, this time "Thunderball", again with a really nice dust jacket

The following photo is actually an enlargement of a section of the photo above showing some other books including a Popular Penguins Series of "Casino Royale".  I love looking at books in the background of photos to see what surprises might appear

After speaking to my folks on the phone I asked them to purchase the two book club editions as well as the Jonathan Cape.  David also very kindly threw in the Girls On Guns copy of "Dr No".

So my parents have since returned from their short break and I've added the books to my collection.  I even took a photo of all my book club editions.

And it was then that I realised I'm still missing "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Goldfinger".  I'm not sure how this has occurred.  I've seen so many copies of the book club edition of "Goldfinger" for sale during my travels but never thought to buy a copy because I was so sure I already had it.  Oh well, looks like I've got some more books to collect...

The Great Collectors Heaven Fair 2018

The Great Collectors Heaven Fair took place a couple of weeks ago.  So early that Sunday morning I lined up outside the Malvern Town Hall with tens of other people on the hunt for collectables... in my case James Bond books.

While scouring the stalls I noticed many Bond toys, swap cards and even daybill posters for sale. Fortunately there were three stalls selling Bond paperbacks.  Here's some photos of the books:

Yes, those books are on the floor in the last photo.  But fear not because the Still Life series version of "Moonraker" on the right was in such good condition that I purchased it anyway.  It was a slightly better version than the copy I already had in my collection.