Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 11:51:26 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Janet Millenson Subject: Audubon's "Birds of America" sale Comments: To: BIRDCHAT postings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Although I collect antiquarian bird books and art, I think I'll skip Christie's upcoming auction of a set of Audubon's "Birds of America" (expected to go for $3-4 million) for a number of reasons: * How can it be worth so much without a "dot com" in its name? * I don't have the shelf space for anything that large. * Owning it would lead to too many "elephant [folio] in the living room" jokes. * No way would it fit in my carry-on luggage coming home from New York. * Audubon prints are, like, so 19th century. * Animals were definitely harmed in the making of this book. * I'm waiting for a copy to show up on eBay. * The contents don't agree with the latest AOU taxonomic classifications. * If you want to show off your wealth, don't buy books -- they're not visible enough and they already have someone else's name on them. (Hmmm... "Trump's Birds of America"?) Oh, well... maybe in my next lifetime! Janet Millenson Potomac, MD janet@twocrows.com --------------------------------------------------- "Look at the birds!" -- Pascal the parrot ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================