Two years ago, I wrote about Prof. Uriah Konje’s dream book of numbers that purported to help you win the lottery or any other similar game of chance. I’m still getting inquires about the book and how to find a copy.
With lotteries nationwide and quick picks locally, many folks are trying to make a lotta bucks off a few dollars. This week, I chose the most recent question about the dream book for readers’ questions. Each week, I cull your questions, and choose a few to research and answer.
I can’t appraise anyone’s treasures – as many people have requested of me – but I can walk you through the process of finding out what you have and how much people are paying – or not paying – for similar items.
I’ve also chosen this week a question about stereoview cards by 19th-century photographer J.N. Wilson.
Question:
I’m in need of a dream book. Pls let me know further information.
Answer:
Prof. Uriah Konje seemed to have first published “The H.P. Dream Book. This Is Your Lucky Day. What Did You Dream?” in 1926. When I first wrote about the book, I found several sites that were selling updated versions of it.
I had come across a 1927 edition of the paperback book at auction – dog-eared and torn, likely from too many years of too much use. Prof. Konje was the nom de plume of a man named Herbert Gladstone Parris. I could find very little biographical information about Parris, who was born in 1893 and may have owned a major dream-book publishing company based in upstate New York.
Newer editions of the book with a 1980 publication date are not hard to find. Several sites were selling it at reasonable prices: luckykmojo.com for $5, and dreambookoutlet.com for $4.80.
Question:
I have quite a few (stereoview) cards from J.N. Wilson. Where can I find the value?
Answer:
My first answer here is my usual answer: try eBay, where everything gets offered for sale, and is or is not sold.
I wrote about J.N. Wilson’s stereoview cards in several blog posts a couple years ago, including one in which I interviewed a great-granddaughter who had started collecting them. At the time, a card with two black slave boys had sparked questions about the rarity of the cards and the actual photographer: Mathew Brady, known for photographing great statesmen of the 19th century and sending out teams of photographers to capture Civil War battles, or Wilson, who was shooting around the same time.
Wilson was pretty well known in Savannah, GA, for more than 30 years during the mid-1800s. He produced stereoview cards of sites around that city and others in Georgia, and traveled to Florida to shoot orange groves, camp scenes and other places.
On eBay, I found only a handful of Wilson’s cards for sale, with the highest price of $19 (of African Americans in a cotton field in Savannah) and the lowest at nearly $10. Another site was offering Wilson cards of an African American couple in front of their shack and a cotton-processing scene at $75 each. The asking price for black memorabilia tends to be higher.
So, if you have a large group of Wilson cards and can sell them for at least $10 a pop, you’ll have a tidy sum.
If readers can offer advice on these questions, please leave comments in the box below.
