Bookworm of Gensan goes sleuthing: Mystery of a Long-lost Book incidentally found in a Used Book Store

As usual, I was at my favorite Used Book Store (UBS) on a Sunday morning (July 2) trawling for interesting books to read and to give as gifts. I normally apply my ukay-ukay skills in looking for books that interest me or some bookworm friends, grandkids and godchildren so usually I start at the shelves containing nonfiction books, coffee-table books, novels, children's books and end up at the magazine bins. But that Sunday morning, I started at the magazine bins and proceeded to the coffee-table books. When I pulled out Carl Sagan's Cosmos from the shelf, this is what I saw which shocked me!

The book's dust jacket with two price labels on it.

NF-S 16 code written near the spine of the book.

The first picture above shows the book's dust jacket with two UBS price labels. The picture below it shows my own version of the Dewey Decimal System of classifying the books in my library written in black marker ink near the book spine (NF-S 16)!

I immediately scanned the book for other marks I made on it.

Rubber stamp mark of my name was erased from the inside front cover.

The title page of the book with the rubber stamp mark of my name was torn out.

Rubber stamp mark of my name on page 11.

The rubber stamp mark of my name was carefully cut from page 111.

While taking a few moments to take shots of the book with my cellphone camera, only one thought swirled in my mind: How the hell did my long-lost book end up here in UBS? 


Summoning up from my memory the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys which I read as a child and teenager, I resolved to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Back at home, I took out the binder which contains the catalog of books I have in my library. This is what I found in the catalog:

I wrote  ?  and a check mark after the book title which meant somebody borrowed it, but I couldn't, at that time, recall who it was. I remember though having read it in the early 1990s when I transferred to my present residence and someone borrowed it not long afterwards. That was almost twenty years ago! It was time for some detective work! Let's go, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Nancy Drew, and Joe and Frank Hardy!

As far as I can remember, only two friends used to borrow hard-cover, coffee-table and pocketbooks from me and were delinquent in returning them: Delinquent Young Borrower (DYB) and Delinquent Old Borrower (DOB). DYB is a graduate of the university I work for while DOB is a local writer. Both of them were interested in astronomy, the unknown, UFOs. 

My primary suspect was DYB. He used to travel from Davao City and Metro Manila and vice-versa. It could be that he went through hard times and had to sell my books to UBS branches found in Davao City and Metro Manila. But wait! I know for a fact that UBS has a centralized buying system which sources used books from the USA. So it couldn't be DYB. Hmmmm . . .

On the other hand, I always meet DOB at UBS where I would drop hints about his returning my books (to no avail). At the time he borrowed books from me, he told me he needed them to write his book about extraterrestrials landing in Mindanao (this book was finally published last summer).

So I went back to UBS on July 5 to talk to the branch cashier who was on her day-off that Sunday. I took out Carl Sagan's Cosmos from the shelf and showed her the proofs that I own the book.

I told her I had two suspects, but since she didn't know DYB personally, I only mentioned DOB's name. She looked at the book's dust jacket and the price labels. She said one of the labels indicates that the book was shipped to UBS just last month. She told me she remembers DOB buying it and returning it soon after because he already had a copy of it. 

Together, we pieced the mystery of the long-lost book and answered the question How the hell did my long-lost book end up here in UBS?:

DOB still has the copy of my book which he borrowed almost twenty years ago. He wants to get rid of it. So when he saw the used copy on sale at UBS, he saw the opportunity to do so. 

He bought the book and once back at his house, removed the dust jacket and switched the UBS copy with my book. He took pains to remove signs of my ownership on it (some, but not all) and returned it (my book) covered in the dust jacket of the UBS copy several days later. Sitting on his bookshelf at home now is his copy Carl Sagan's Cosmos. 

What he didn't count on was that with my ukay-ukay skills (plus some detective work), I would eventually discover the switching he did.

Mystery of a long-lost book incidentally found in a Used Book Store: SOLVED!

As to what motivated DOB to do the dirty deed of switching my book with what he bought at UBS instead of returning it to its rightful owner (me!) deserves another blogpost. :)