Life In 19x19

Okay, I am going to put this lot up for bid as a group. Terms are:

1. Pay by PayPal or, if I know you, check.
2. You pay actual shipping including boxing up cost.
3. You have to take _all_ the books!

I have a bid from someone of $600.

You can post replies here or send me PMs, in which case I will post the amount of the latest bid when I get new bids. The bidding will end next Sunday the 29th.

600 for all those babies, thats cheap. I'll think about it!

The bidding stands now at $700.

Keep in mind that the funds will go to a scholarship program...

The bid stands at $1,050.

The owner of the books, Mr. Joseph Z. Yao, lives with his wife in Los Angeles. He was born in a small town in Yu Hang and went to school in College St. Ignace, in Shanghai. In 1947, he won a scholarship to LMU, then went to University of Chicago where he got a PhD in mathematics and a masters in engineering. He taught math at Illinois Institute of Technology, then went to work for Boeing. From 1972 until his retirement in 1992, he worked at an engineer and then chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

He was a lifelong devotee of go, chess and bridge, buying thousands and thousands of books. Since it was hard to get go books in the US, he sent $100 or more a month to Japan to buy the newest go books. He studied the books assiduously, even after having a stroke, but further decline in his health means he can no longer use them, according to his wife, Hong-Dan Zheng, so they made this arrangement with the AGA to get the books into the hands of people who could use them.

aokun wrote:... so they made this arrangement with the AGA to get the books into the hands of people who could use them.

I guess it's too late, but it seems a shame (and probably less profitable) to put them all in one person's hands instead of at least selling the collection in smaller lots. Better yet would have been to follow the suggestion to put the books into a library, which would have made them available to a much larger circle. But I guess that's work... Oh well.

daal wrote:

aokun wrote:... so they made this arrangement with the AGA to get the books into the hands of people who could use them.

I guess it's too late, but it seems a shame (and probably less profitable) to put them all in one person's hands instead of at least selling the collection in smaller lots. Better yet would have been to follow the suggestion to put the books into a library, which would have made them available to a much larger circle. But I guess that's work... Oh well.

I have a number of times broken up groups of books or coins or other such stuff to sell them in small lots. There is a lot ... a lot ... of labor and sales tax accounting and such that goes into it. In the meantime, the expressions of interest I got, except for one, were for the group. If there is extra value there, you could buy them and sell them piecemeal. That would work out well for everyone.

daal wrote:

aokun wrote:... so they made this arrangement with the AGA to get the books into the hands of people who could use them.

I guess it's too late, but it seems a shame (and probably less profitable) to put them all in one person's hands instead of at least selling the collection in smaller lots. Better yet would have been to follow the suggestion to put the books into a library, which would have made them available to a much larger circle. But I guess that's work... Oh well.

A library is one of the bidders, btw.

aokun wrote:[...

Sorry about getting on your case. Not being the one to do the work, it's easy for me to talk. But I am heartened to hear that a library is one of the bidders.

hanekomu wrote:I guess the reason this thread is so quiet may be that the sudden increase from $600 to $1050 shocked the potential bidders so now they are waiting until the last minute.

Yes. They're lurking. Waiting to snipe. Not wanting to reveal their batteries.

The auction will end at noon Pacific time tomorrow. To avoid chaos at the end, I'll take bids of the form "$100 more than the next highest bid up to a limit of such-and-such."

The top bid is now $1,820

The top bid is now $2,200

... and we're done. $2,200!

aokun wrote:... and we're done. $2,200!

Congratulations. Good result. A good deal for the buyer but not such a great deal that we'd have to be sorry about the amount that the AGA received.

Its been a while since this was updated and im gonna let the cat out of the bag at this point. You will see this information in the E-Journal soon as well.

On April 15, the Empty Sky Go Club of Rochester gathered to celebrate its acquisition of a large collection of Go books. See this thread for details. The books will now be donated to the Greg Lefler Wing of the RIT Library and will add to one of the largest collection of Go books accessible to the general public. From any library in the world that participates in the interlibrary load program, you can check out any of these books. The photos attached show the newly acquired books and the members of the Empty Sky Club who helped in making this possible.

All of the current collection in the RIT library can be accessed by web. The collection can be found on the RIT library search page using the search terms "Empty Sky" or "Greg Lefler".

The books can be requested anywhere in the world using the WorldCat system (http://www.worldcat.org). WorldCat can also show books close to your area. We hope this will be utilized by go players not only around the country, but around the world.

Three cheers for the Empty Sky Go Club of Rochester!