Collecting Sasek

Sadly, Sasek's books have been out of print for years. However, as of May 2003 Rizzoli have started to reissue sympathetic reproductions of selected titles.

Although the rest of the books are highly collectable, there are a lot of copies in circulation and collecting the This is series can be done fairly easily with a bit of patience.

Notes on buying

Details and prices

Condition

If you are buying second-hand books take care to read the description carefully and make sure that you know what you are paying for. Original copies in good condition complete with their dust jackets can be very hard to find so if you want to try and get something slightly cheaper consider ex-library copies (these are very common) which are often in excellent condition apart from their library markings, or go for copies that are missing their dust jackets but which are fine inside.

Format

Although the This is books stick to the same general format throughout there are variations which are worth knowing about if you want to collect them. I have seen the following for sale:

• hardback copies with dust-jacket and identical picture on the inside hardboard cover
• hardback with dust-jacket and a plainer inside cover
• pictorial hardboard cover and no dust-jacket at all.
• paperback
• abridged editions

This is only really important if you want to make sure you are buying a book with a distinctive Sasek cover. A hardback copy can be without a dust-jacket but still have the pictorial cover. Usually anything listed as No DJ has a plain cover. If it's something you are concerned about, check with the seller before you buy.

I only seen a few paperback copies for sale; they probably haven't stood the test of time very well. Similarly abridged editions don't seem that common, but there are a few, so be careful if it's the full book you want.

Postage

If buying from overseas remember that you will have to pay postage costs on top of the price of the book. Most copies tend to turn up in the US so shipping to Europe or Japan can be costly, or slow if you opt for surface mail.

Availability

Books

Most of the This is books are nearly always available, and there are usually copies at both end of the price range depending on the format and condition. Although some sellers proclaim that This is Such-and-Such is one of the rarest titles, the only one I have found to be truly rare is This is Cape Canaveral, for obvious reasons.

The 4 non This is titles are much harder to find:

• Stone is Not Cold and Letters from Pompeii are hard to find in good condition with a dust-jacket, and can be expensive (especially Letters from Pompeii)
• Mike and the Modelmakers can be easier to pick up in the UK, and usually isn't too dear.
• Zoo ist Das Leben is very hard to find outside Germany, but usually isn't that expensive when you do find a copy.
• The rest of the titles (Benjamin a tisic morskych dasu Kapitana Barnabase, Sedm mamlasu and See the city!) seem virtually unknown.

See the pages for individual titles to buy online.

Films

Hard to find. See films for details.

Prints and paintings

Prints can turn up on ebay and the price tends to depend on the subject matter and who is bidding on it. I have only seen ones for sale in Germany, presumably because Sasek settled in Munich. If anyone knows the whereabout of any paintings, please contact us.

Postcards

There are some Sasek postcards still available, and some which are no longer for sale, but may turn up elsewhere.

Where to buy

This is Paris, This is London, This is New York and This is San Francisco are available new, the rest of the books are out of print. Items are often available through the following sites, which I have used frequently and can recommend:

Used booksellers

This is New York and This is San Francisco are available new from Amazon.com. The rest of the series is often available through Amazon zShops, Amazon's second hand marketplace. There can often be hundreds of books available so if you are looking for a particular title, choose the book you want and follow the Amazon link from there to perform a more exact search.

Abebooks is similar to Amazon, with a wide selection of copies with varying conditions and prices. It is usually easier to find the non-This Is books through Abebooks, possibly because it has branches in France, Germany and the UK which are very active. It is also good if you are not located in the US, because you can restrict a search to a certain country if you want to save on postage.

Auction sites

Ebay needs little introduction! It can be a haven for Sasek collectors, and it is usually easy to pick up copies fairly cheaply if you wait for the right ones to come up. Most copies for sale turn up in the US so if you are looking on, for example, www.ebay.co.uk choose "Search for items available to the UK" when you are searching to find ones that could be shipped over. As with all auction sites make sure you know what you are buying, and contact the seller if you want to check condition, format, postage, payment methods etc. before you place a bid.

Individual sites

There are a small number of individual sites, most of them in Japan, that deal in Sasek books as well as other collectable children's authors. These sites can often be more expensive than either booksellers or auction sites, and stocks are lower. A search on Google usually picks them up.