Rare Books

More Moe's is now open Wednesday through Saturday 11-4

Since 1959 Moe's has been providing customers with fair and accurate valuations of rare and collectible books in a broad and expansive range of subject areas. While specializing in books on the fine arts, photography, and architecture, our rare books staff has a combined 75 years of experience appraising and evaluating scarce and unusual books in virtually every field of interest. Open from noon to 6 pm Wednesday to Saturday on our fourth floor, there is always an available staff member pleased to evaluate any books you might care to bring in. While waiting for your appraisal take a few moments to browse through our extensive inventory of rare and fine books, as well as a superb collection of books in literature, the sciences, illustrated books, fashion, exploration, and just about any other subject area imaginable. Bring us your books and come have a look at ours, you will find it a fascinating and rewarding experience.

Within Moe's Books there is a special Rare & Fine Arts book department, sequestered in its own room on the fourth floor of the bookstore. The origins of this "store within a store" will explain its being designated "More Moe's." The previous location of Moe's, in the 1960s and early 1970s, was two doors down from our current site. As the store grew and prospered, our inventory of expensively produced books and very scarce books and valuable centuries old books increased and created a need to segregate this group of books – to protect the books from damage that results from mishandling and other threats, all lessened by a more watchful husbandry.

Prior to this moment in time, a year or two perhaps, Moe had given over to small but zealous group of employees a large corner of the store to manage on their own. A proto-store-within-a-store, you might say. Headed by Sam Bercholtz, this group was blissfully enthusiastic about the science of the mind, mostly as experience, and all things Asian and mystical, topics enjoying a special vogue at the time. (Sam and his group would later move next door to found a separate book shop they named Shambala Books, which thrived until recently, and which also developed into Shambala Publications, still quite vigorous but now far from its home.) Perhaps the thought of diminishing further the general area of the growing business hatched the plan of an annex. Soon, in a small store front around the corner, More Moe's opened, with an inventory limited to the valuable rare and fine arts book collections, with limited hours of business, and with a staff limited to two, Gene Barone (now general manager of Moe's) and John Wong (the still reigning book wizard of More Moe's).

When Moe's moved into its new, four story building in 1978, More Moe's was returned to the fold, provided with about a third of the area of the fourth floor, walled off with handsome oak and large glass windows. The name More Moe's, however, with its overtones of "annex," had stuck. The staff was increased to four, and the shop within the store would be also now open seven days. and the collection continued to grow and deepen.

Around 1991, Moe's began to post books for sale on the internet – to the limit that commerce was permitted back in the early days. It quickly became evident that the inventory of More Moe's was the best candidate for cataloging: the items had value sufficient to return the additional cost of cataloging them, and a point of sale system, necessary to control the database, was most easily established for the segregated contents of the shop within a shop, More Moe's.

Today our internet sales worldwide are a major source of revenue for us; and our newfound international customer base increases the breadth of books we can expect to sell, in any language.