Book Collecting and Book History

When you entered the shop, on an upper floor of an office building, their offices were at your right. Just ahead in the central room was a table on which were spread some choice American first editions. To the left, somewhat more dimly lit, was the back room--the domain of Waller Barrett. John Kohn and Michael Papantonio presumably had offered their best customer a prime point of vantage on the premises, certainly a sound decision for their business or, perhaps, the arrangement was Waller Barrett's idea."

In Certain Circles, The Printed Word Is A Major Investment - By Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, (no date available but circa 1975). "In 1940, John S. Van E. Kohn, then sole proprietor of the Collectors Bookshop in Manhattan, sold a first edition of "The Marionettes," a little-known one-act play by William Faulkner. The price was $125. On February 27 of this year, Mr. Kohn, now vice president of the Seven Gables Bookshop in New York and acting on behalf of the University of Virginia library, bought the same book - one of four known remaining copies - at a New York auction. The sellers were the heirs of the woman who had purchased it from the Collectors Bookshop 35 years earlier. The price: $34,000."