♪ ♪ during booktv's recent visit to provo utah with the help of our cable partner comcast would

take a tour of moon's rare books to see brigham young's copy of the "book of mormon" as well as an original copy of thomas paine's common sense. >> i think like-- i've been collecting rare books for the past 30 years. i decided to relocate to provo after selling my bookshop in dallas which also sold new books and in the past 10 to 15 years sales of books have suffered with the abandoned e-books and everything going digital but what i found is the interest in rare books has increased. in my shop right now there are about 1000 books but in my inventory there about 5000 books. i wrote two books through here and i specialize in four different areas. i specialized in rare bibles, bible's from the past 500 years.

being in your tie specialize in early mormon books, classics in literature and early american history. one of the items i enjoy collecting our bibles or really just text that belong to well-known historical figures and being from utah one of the more popular items that i like to show people his brigham young's copy of the "book of mormon." it is housed in the nice protective clamshell but this is according to family tradition, this is the copy of the "book of mormon" that was on her damjansk nightstand when he died in 1977 and be opened up to the title page you can see brigham young's signature. another one of my, i enjoy early american history and this is really one of the most important books printed in america pre-

1800 and it's an original copy of thomas paine's common sense which was printed in philadelphia. the printer was robert l. on third street in philadelphia and if you go there today you will see a sign that says here is where common sense was printed january 9, 1776. it's like a little pamphlet. it's sewn together and is quite rare and it was printed three times in january of 1776. has an interesting story because thomas payne went to robert bell , wanted to have this printed and he wanted the proceeds to buy the soldiers mittens. well, after one through three printings they have falling out and so thomas paine about anybody to print. he lowered the price and he said anybody could printer that's a reason it's so well-known and printed and to this day has the designation of having the

highest saturation of any book written in america. my favorite find in the past year is a bible that belonged to the man who wrote "lord of the rings" so i have chair told in's copy of the bible. it had a nice protective case made for it but he had a very simple bible it was printed in 1947. this was in the middle of writing "lord of the rings." he was writing"lord of the rings" from 1937 to 1954 and you can see a beautiful well-known recognizable signature in the front but what most interested me about this book was the fact that he annotated this book and made comments in the margin and tear on the last page of john you can see he is making comments comparing it to seven different versions of the bible.

it's a better transition of the original greek and so j.r. tolkien's viable the one he had while he was writing "lord of the rings", just 1000 books in here are worth over $10 million. actually there are few books worth over 1 million apiece although i have looks as low as $100 but that's kind of the starting level for the books that i have. what i enjoy so much about the rare books is the hunt. it's a treasure hunt. finding them and then also realizing in these older books they are different. they have a different feel, different look and often a different story often depending on who owned the book that is an added story within the story.

this is the perfect place to keep these books because it's fireproof and its humidity controlled and there is no uv light. this little book has a big story but if you are looking at it you'll see it's in latin and this is something that could be overlooked unless you understand what the symbol is. this little book has a great story but you have to know history. you have to understand the history of this time period to understand who owned this book so you almost have to do detective work. now to determine who owned this book you look at this and when you see this you see a crown so that makes you think royalty. you go okay, well now you see the fluor daily so you think that's french for that's french royalty but why do you see the two sides? that's because this person was

married so this would be a clean copy. the king at the time was louis the 16th. this is the seal of marie antoinette and this, it's in latin. you may not recognize the book and you may overlook that but if you know what marie antoinette's sea looked like you'd be able to identify the sender very of very few of these books that is survived. when she was executed for libraries were observed into the french national library. this would have been the little book that she carried with her and she would have had more than one. this is something that each year or so they were given new copy so she would have had a few and that's why she could have why she could have given this copy way and that's why it's currently not in the french national library anymore. finally another fun book i have is a shakespeare book. it's quite rare.

shakespeare died in 1516 and 1523 his complete works were first printed and again in 1632 and 1664 in 1685. only 250 copies of these have survived so there's maybe 1000 copies in the world and of those thousand the vast majority, over 90% are around but i have portfolio, 1685 and even before yoopen the book you know the book has a story to tell. it's a stunning binding with working class. but it's the complete works of shakespeare done in 1685. and i haven't opened to romeo and juliette. i will continue to collect books

for the rest of my life. i have had people ask me, when you're going to retire and what you going to do? imrt doing it. i can't think of anything i would rather do than travel around tracking down rare books. i enjoy these books. people ask, do you read them? absolutely. you never know if one of the earlier versions have made an inscription that could substantially increase the value of the book or add added interest to the story behind the book so i will always do this. and never get tired of it. i love sharing stories with old and young and i look forward to it every day. bookshops have been closing in record numbers. national chains are closing down 15 years ago i knew owners of about 300 bookstores. 250 of those closed just in the past 15 years