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Monday, September 12, 2005
VERY HANDS-ON "The problem for dealers is not so much selling as finding the really nice things," E. Forbes Smiley III told a New York Times reporter in an article about the hot market in old maps. E. Forbes, himself a dealer, seems to have found the really nice things by going to the libraries they’re in, taking out his X-Acto knife , and stealing them. A few months ago, he dropped a blade and left it behind him on the floor of Yale’s rare book library. When a security guard at the library caught up with him, it became apparent that Smiley’s jacket was crammed with fine old maps. His haul that day would have been worth almost a million dollars had he not been caught. This is the sort of American map Smiley dealt in. It shows the area in Massachusetts where Smiley is building a new modular house for himself. Here’s a Boston Herald story about it: PUTTING HIS NEW HOME ON THE MAP Yeah, that sounds like he’s brazening it out, but he was “so nervous during his hearing” the other day that “he misstated his age.” UD couldn’t find a photo of him, but the paper describes him as “a balding bespectacled man dressed in a sports coat, yellow tie and khaki pants.” Here’s a picture that has helped put Smiley’s more likely new home on the map. |