Pook In Business

The author was quite overwhelmed at the way the antique trade took Pook in Business to their hearts. Some wrote to him praising the accurate background of the book—Pook spent ten happy years in the game of polishing-rags to riches—albeit bemoaning certain TV programmes which have made the customers too knowledgeable for comfort.

Pook lets us share in the thrills and nightmares of acquiring one’s first shop, and opening it to see if the public will actually pay money for the debris of the past. Readers will delight in his advice about how to buy antiques, both from the auction sales and privately, and how he finally solved that unique paradox of the trade—“Any fool can sell it, but it takes a smart operator to buy it.”

We meet the whole range of customers familiar to all dealers, from the overseas bargain-hunter to the eccentric lady who has an obsession for filling her house with junk—not forgetting the perils of purchasing stock which is still very much on HP. In this connection Pook employs the beautiful Olga as a kind of financial bloodhound.

For the dealer and layman alike Pook in Business is a treasure house of hilarious anecdotes which you will want to read time and again—and maybe give you an unexpected interest in attics, cellars and dustbins.