Word has spread fast among the tweed-clad Steinbeck scholars, the rare booksellers, the well-heeled collectors.
One of John Steinbeck's least distinguished works, "Cup of Gold" -- with prose that one critic calls more purple than the California Sierra -- will be sold to the highest bidder today for $20,000, $30,000 or even more.
Not only is the title exceedingly hard to find, but this first edition is inscribed by the Nobel laureate to his sister and has what one expert calls "a really rare dust jacket."
No matter that Steinbeck reportedly disliked his first novel, published in 1929, about a young 17th-century would-be pirate, and its jacket illustration of a buccaneer printed in florid yellow, blue and blood red.
"It was a novel he was ashamed of afterward," said scholar Paul Douglass.
But because so few first editions were printed, the book is far harder to find than say, "The Grapes of Wrath," considered Steinbeck's greatest work.
And that, collectors say, makes this volume a real find.
"Cup of Gold" and more than two dozen other first editions from the collection of Steinbeck's late sister will be auctioned today by Bonhams & Butterfields in a sale to be simulcast in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Proceeds will go toward renovating the Pacific Grove cottage where Steinbeck wrote "Tortilla Flat" and "Of Mice and Men." It was later the home of Elizabeth Steinbeck Ainsworth, the sister to whom Steinbeck inscribed a number of his books. Ainsworth died in 1992.
Experts say the collection is significant.
"It is an important sale for Steinbeck, because these are unique signed copies," said Bruce MacMakin, senior vice president at San Francisco's PBA Gallery, a Bonhams competitor.
This is a rarified world where collectors comb used book shops and the Internet in search of a volume with an eloquent inscription, a scribbled personal note tucked amid pages, or perhaps an irregular printing of the gilt-lettered spine.
The more read a book, the more it is loved, the less it may be worth.
"You want them to be as close to the original issue as possible, with as little evidence of handling," said Catherine Williamson, Bonhams' director of fine books and manuscripts.
The tiniest scuff on the spine or tear in a yellowed paper cover can lower the value by hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
The Steinbeck volumes on sale today are in excellent shape, but not pristine, experts said.
