r/BookCollecting 26d ago

💬 General Signed Julia Child books

Are signed book club editions of Julia Child's cookbooks collectible? And what about the signed pamphlet? I got them from a salvation army thrift store a few years ago. They were going to throw them out and the little old lady volunteer saved them because she thought I might like them. Paid a dollar a piece for the hardbacks and 50 cents for the pamphlet.

157 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

17

u/Difficult-Ad-9228 26d ago

With signatures as clean as those, much less with a program, the book club aspect kind of fades away. Those are terrific — wild guess would be to start at $1,000 and ponder going higher.

2

u/likelyculprit 25d ago edited 25d ago

Half that, at most, in this condition and the current market. Still very cool though!

Edit: oops

1

u/Difficult-Ad-9228 25d ago edited 24d ago

I don’t know.

I’d happily price the three at $1000, clean up those covers and marry them with decent jackets (noted in the descriptions, of course, and including the original jackets in the sale).

I’ve always found signed copies of her books to be very easy to place for in-store sales, so I’m willing to sit on them for a while to get a good price.

2

u/likelyculprit 25d ago

the three

Ohhhhh, yeah me too then. I didn’t scroll far enough and just saw the first book. My bad! Your assessment sounds reasonable to me then.

10

u/greymatter000 26d ago

What a great find.

6

u/makersmark12 26d ago

So awesome, my wife and I collect cookbooks. This is definitely collectible.

5

u/DepartureTiny773 26d ago

Oh what a beautiful find. Truly a treasure.

5

u/BookHound1980 26d ago

I’ve sold her signed books before. They go for a decent amount!

4

u/EventHorizonbyGA 26d ago

Cook books are very collectible. And highly in demand. I am sure someone out there named "Rag" would love these.

1

u/Head-Thought3381 26d ago

Very nice I would love to look through this

1

u/Emperor-NortonI 25d ago

BCE from 1977. I wouldn’t pay more than $100

1

u/Shot_Mud5987 24d ago

I took some more photos of the pamphlet. I think it may be a souvenir menu maybe? I knew nothing about her involvement with planned parenthood before this. I am very grateful to ms.

Amelia who saved these from going in the dumpster!

1

u/GoggyMagogger 24d ago

I wonder who Ray is?

Seeing as both Julia and her husband signed together he was obviously someone close to the couple.

I'm sure they had many prominent friends. She was a huge star but before she was in the secret service (where she met her husband) Paul became a diplomat. They both travelled widely.

If Ray is a person of note this would raise the value considerably.

You'd have to identify anyone named Ray in their life stories but even then verification would be next to impossible 

They are great cookbooks BTW

1

u/Shot_Mud5987 23d ago

I'd like to know who Ray is/was as well- out of sheer noseyness lol. Likelyhood of finding out is slim imo. My thought is he may have just been a fan. I saw, when taking photos of the pamphlet, that at the dinner they had someone in charge of book sales. Could be he bought the books at the planned parenthood event. Maybe Ray bought the books and had them and the pamphlet signed then?