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Author: Holt, David
Title: Two Autographed Letters, Signed, by Book Thief David Holt
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Date Published: 1996
Description:

David Holt was one of the the best known book crooks of our era. He'd led a relatively normal life until he deserted his wife and children, stealing his grandmother's savings bonds and his company's stock certificates, and fleeing to New Zealand, only to be extradited and slapped with a jail sentence for securities fraud. After he got out of jail Holt began concentrating on the book world. His MO was familiar. He didn't steal books so much as play on our lust for them, attempting to extort payment or delivery money for very attractively priced books that he did not own and had no intention of delivering. His particular innovation was that he focused his efforts on higher end dealers in ABAA and ILAB. He worked from New Zealand, Eastern Europe, and possibly Russia, and he adopted several aliases, most notably the persona of an elderly Swiss antiques dealer named Frederick Buwe. Originally he ran his scams by mail, but when the Internet came along the opportunities for fraud expanded exponentially. ABAA security czar John Crichton had a few run ins with him in the mid 90s, but it was Ken Sanders who made a star of David Holt. Sanders went after Holt like an old fashioned wild west sheriff, and it soon became a personal duel between the two men, reaching its apogee with Holt's threat to cut Sanders's balls off. (You can't make this stuff up!) For several years Holt and his aliases and cons dominated the book news, climaxing in the tragic murder of New York dealer Svetlana Aronov and the rumor, never substantiated, that Holt and his Russian mob friends might have had a hand in it. Ken devoted enormous amounts of time and energy - and no little personal risk - to the job of neutralizing Holt and other malefactors, warning us of a new scam nearly every week, and urging us repeatedly to "Govern yourselves accordingly." This lot consists of two letters from Holt, offering books to ABAA emeritus member Louis Collins. They are classic examples from Holt's "middle period" when he was living in Latvia, shortly before he began concentrating on Internet fraud. Four items are offered at typically absurd prices - perhaps the most interesting being a first edition of Patrick Gass's 1807 account of the Lewis and Clark expedition for $245.

Donated by Ten Pound Island Book Co., Gloucester, MA