Ask HN: What is the most obscure book you own?

Just had an interesting conversation about book collecting this weekend: we asked each other which of their books is so obscure or rare that it's unlikely anybody else you know owns a copy.

For me, it's a printed copy of von Neumans "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC", the groundwork for modern computer architecture. Bought it from Kronecker Wallis, a tiny Spanish publisher.

6 points | by Kovah 22 hours ago

11 comments

  • gradschool 3 hours ago
    The Five Gospels, by Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, the original 1993 hardbound print edition [1]. It has the full annotated texts of the four canonical gospels and the gospel of Thomas in the best available modern English translations, with each passage color coded based on a vote by the reviewers about how close to the original sources they think it is.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

  • davidsojevic 8 hours ago
    It'll either be my copy of "The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest" or my copy of "Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?"
  • keiferski 6 hours ago
    These probably aren't super obscure outside of central/Eastern Europe, but: I have a bunch of Soviet-era guides to different countries in the former Eastern Bloc, written in local languages. So for example, a travel guide to Yugoslavia written in Polish.

    My favorite one is an East German guide to useful trade-oriented words in eight different languages. Basically it's a bunch of columns with words like "consumer goods" or "deck cargo" in German, English, Czech, Russian, etc. The introduction especially has some interesting lines like:

    "This book is mainly intended for business with capitalist countries."

  • sejje 16 hours ago
    I own a book by Joseph Altsheler, The Forest Runners. I believe it was published in the 1930s. It's written for boys.

    My dad owns a rare Buddy Hall biography called Rags to Rifleman. Buddy Hall is one of the greatest pool players ever to live.

  • k310 19 hours ago
    I have a bunch of first edition magazines. Too many to list here. Collecting was easy. I was in bookstores, and figured that any first edition was worth the nominal price.

    If anyone's interested,

    https://rentry.co/23pbcaef

  • thorin 10 hours ago
    Not really obscure, but I have a copy of a couple of Indian printed (pirate!) copies of books I bought in a bookshop in Kathmandu:

    The Tibetan Book of the Dead

    The Ascent of Rum Doodle

    My Dad has a lot of old late 1800s early 1900 books including a huge 2 volume dictionary, which is actually more of an encyclopaedia. It has topic sections like "How to defend yourself from savages" or "How to dig your own coal mine" etc.

  • demygale 15 hours ago
    Miss Marjoribanks volume 2
  • abstractspoon 12 hours ago
    Some Persian fairy tales dated about 1850
  • spottedmarley 21 hours ago
    The Kybalion by Three Initiates

    Almost nobody has it but that's kinda part of how it's supposed to be.