It is a double pleasure to save a valuable old book and still earn money from it

It is a double pleasure to save a valuable old book and still earn money from it

Zagreb antiquarian Biblos has been successfully operating for seventeen years, which is an impressive number for a time when books are becoming less expensive. But Biblos specializes as a scientific antiquarian with a special emphasis on Croatian heritage. Such valuable and rare books are sold for several tens of thousands of kunas, and Glavan dreams of finding Marulić's 'Judita' from the sixteenth century

On the corner of Palmotićeva and Đorđićeva streets in Zagreb is the Biblos antique shop, owned by Daniel Glavan, a born bibliophile whose love for books has drawn him from childhood. Sam says that from the age of eleven he started visiting antique shops in Zagreb and it seems that this determined his life path. Ever since he started writing books, he didn't have a plan b - today he says that he hopes to write books for the rest of his life. And the story begins 17 years ago over a coffee with a college colleague.

- While having a coffee, I asked my colleague Marko if he had 1,700 kuna because that's exactly how much I had then. At that time, an antiques fair opened on Britanci, and as I lived nearby, I thought we could sell books there. It was 2002, a colleague agreed to my business proposal and with HRK 3,400 we started a business - begins Daniel.

They didn't have any books, but they placed an ad in the Blue Advertiser to buy books and leased a stand at Britanac. That was the beginning. With HRK 3,400 in initial capital, which sounds a bit like gambling, they set out to realize their dream. With that initial capital, they were able to buy about 200 books and already the following week they returned the investment and earned about HRK. The sale to Britanac lasted about a year, after which they opened the company and officially started working. The first address of Biblos was in the center of Rotondi.

From the stand to the company

Many people just want to get rid of old books, and many don't even know what they own, which helped Daniel a lot in the beginning. Acquiring books at that time was reduced to calls from citizens who wanted to get rid of books, and Daniel accepted them with open arms.

- There was also beginner's luck because sometimes we would come to pick up a book that was interesting to us, and we would get many others because people wanted to get rid of them. Well, it used to happen that for a small amount of money you get a bunch of books - Daniel explains and adds that on a farm in Feričanci, near Našice, he found really excellent books that the hosts didn't even know they had and would probably have gone to waste if they had stayed there. similar, and Daniel could also be called the savior of old and rare valuable books. Like a cultural superhero who wants to save rare, sometimes forgotten books and preserve a piece of cultural heritage for future generations. In Byblos, you can indeed find valuable examples of Croatian literary history, some dating back to the 16th century. But what are the prices of such valuable editions that are several hundred years old? Glavan says that there are various elements that determine the price and that the year is not decisive.

What is the value of a book

- For example, Marulić's 'Institutions' from the 16th century sell for HRK 15,000, and Fortis's travelogue, which was published 200 years later, in 1778 to be precise, and which is the most extensive edition with many graphics and maps, costs HRK 19,000 - explains Daniel.
He adds. and that recently at the 'Interliber' auction, the most expensive book sold was from 1938, and it fetched HRK 27,000. It is about 'Turpitude', which Marko Ristić gave to Miroslav Krleža. Namely, the price of the book will be increased by the good story behind it, and 'Turpituda' was banned and systematically destroyed by the authorities of the time, who did not like this parody, i.e. grotesque.
- Ristić managed to save a dozen copies, one of which was given by Krl hedgehog, on which he wrote: 'Here is one of the copies that the state prosecutor's office did not destroy'. So a book that is only 70 years old can be worth much more than a book that is 200 years old if the story around it is interesting and if it has something special - says Glavan.

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