I would not be surprised if in a month it turns out a bunch of those don’t match with the crimes

For sure I would also expect that the division line lies somewhere else than just one continent. But so far that’s the only datapoint I have

No :D

But then my question is, do we feel there are a lot of such collections? Or rather not?

To rephrase a little bit:
“Are there places where someone could pull off another Petrarch today?”

• yes
• no
• a few
• a lot
• only in Africa (see the answer in AskHistorians)

That went dark very fast. I appreciate :D

I’ve never considered someone buying books as status symbols. But I can see that happening

Ok, sure. But you still buy them to read them

🤔 Isn’t reading them the point of collecting?
You seriously made me wonder :D

But still, even if they don’t read them, they know they have them. So the collector and the seller know that such book exists and is somewhere out there and the owner knows they have such title in their stash

Yes, for sure. But then that’s a “lost cache”. Similar to the works we’ll find in a few years buried somewhere under the ground. But what about “active collections”?

Interesting indeed

But also those two are cases when we discovered more or less “working copies” of interest.
Has there been a similar find of a text that was copied and given (I’m trying to broadly cover a meaning of “published” here)

Thank you!

I guess the community of private collectors might have (doesn’t have to be institutionalized, centralized nor digital, just the fact of knowing is enough) as a group some kind of grasp on who has what. But is that fact known?

Huh, that’s an example of what I’ve been looking for

What phrase should I search for to learn more about the archive?

But do we know if those have been generally indexed?

Yes, but that is a case when we knew we had them, we just couldn’t read them. I’m wondering if at least “index” of readable contents of most “libraries” is for sure known, mostly known or maybe there are many we don’t know what’s inside

Yes, but that is a case when we knew we had them, we just couldn’t read them. I’m wondering if at least “index” of readable contents of most “libraries” is for sure known, mostly known or maybe there are many we don’t know what’s inside