The Stephen King Collection of James Strand
What was stolen and what's left of it
The Stephen King collection of James Strand just went live on my website. It includes the legendary asbestos edition of Firestarter, a 15-page manuscript, a couple of lettered limited editions, as well as some common titles in uncommon condition.
Subscribers to this Substack, Dispatches from the Rare Books Trade, receive early notice when new arrivals post to Downtown Brown Books’ website. New arrivals are offered on my website for a month before they are listed on the big marketplaces and at discounted prices. Subscribers have their privileges!
Today’s list really contains what’s left of the Strand Stephen King collection. Those of you who have been following along know that after Jim Strand died in the summer of 2023, his house was looted in what is probably the biggest theft from a private library in US history. Call it $3 million. Gone.
Fortunately, the FBI stepped into the case, first with the Art Crime team, which focuses on cultural property, like the recent case of Asian books stolen from the UCLA library. Later, the organized crime unit and then a regional task force on theft rings took over the investigation. Organized crime calls up images of the The Godfather and The Sopranos, but it also includes loose groups that specialize in ugly, unglamorous housebreaking, snatch-and-grab robberies at stores, and mass shoplifting. This was more of a housebreaking group.
And for the most part, the people who stole and fenced Jim Strand’s books weren’t criminal masterminds.
Consider this fellow:
Just before Christmas (2025), he posted James Strand’s copy of Stephen King’s The Stand, to eBay. We know it was Jim’s copy because Eric Kramer, the owner of Fantasy Archives, got King to inscribe a bunch of books for Strand on 7/17/82, at the third NECON dinner. King was the guest of honor. Strand had copies of Firestarter (on today’s list), Cujo (on today’s list), The Stand (now in FBI evidence), The Gunslinger (missing), The Shining (missing), and Different Seasons (missing), all nicely inscribed on the same day.
Stolen books offered on eBay are virtually impossible to recover. By the time eBay responds to a subpoena for the buyer’s and seller’s information, the deal is done. In order to retrieve the book, a law enforcement officer in the jurisdiction of the seller or victim has to find someone in the jurisdiction of the buyer and convince them to take on the case. In practice, detectives and FBI agents in other cities are busy with their own cases and don’t have time to track down an eBay purchase. To date, the Strand estate has never successfully recovered an item sold on eBay.
The Stand, however, was different in one key way, and that meant law enforcement didn’t need to get a subpoena and wait for eBay’s lawyers to review it.
The seller photographed the book on top of a piece of mail with his name and address visible.
Like I said, the Strand book thieves are not criminal masterminds.
Despite a general level of incompetence, they only succeed because regular citizens are willing to buy stolen goods if the deal is good enough. James Strand’s copy of The Stand got more than 50 bids on eBay despite the seller only having five feedback. People don’t luck into $8,000 books.1
Fortunately for the Strand family, law enforcement officers found this situation funny—having the fence’s name and address in the photos was too ridiculous to ignore. A detective with the Vancouver, Washington, police department decided to pursue Strand’s Stand. Pretty soon the FBI was on the case, too.
The seller, it turned out, had already sold the book to someone in Seattle who had reached out in an eBay message. An FBI agent visited the buyer and confiscated the book. The seller, being a crook, didn’t end the listing just because he no longer had the book. In fact, the listing was set to automatically renew if the reserve wasn’t met, and so it was auctioned over and over for more than a month after the book was in FBI evidence.
This story has what passes for a happy ending for the people who are victims of theft. Having the book sit in FBI evidence is better than having it disappear completely, but it will be months or even years before the book is returned to the family. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
The Stephen King books on my list today were mostly recovered by the FBI during their investigation. Many are accompanied by the original evidence tags and have the Strand estate bookplate. Only a couple of rare proofs and what may be a unique copy of the British edition of The Stand Uncut—which don’t look like much to the uninitiated—were left behind by the thieves.
Most thieves aren’t book people, but even they know Stephen King books can be valuable. The thieves took almost everything Stephen King–related that Strand had collected over forty-five years and sold most of it within days. The Strand family is still looking for quite a few rare books.
If you are a Stephen King fan, please keep an eye out for these:
King, Stephen. Carrie proof (gutter code o50).
King, Stephen. Carrie proof (gutter code p6).
King, Stephen. Carrie. Doubleday File Copy
King, Stephen. Carrie. Inscribed to Stuart David Schiff, 1979
King, Stephen. Christine. #320 of 1000, signed.
King, Stephen. Christine. Inscribed to King’s agent Kirby McCauley
King, Stephen. Cycle of the Werewolf. #30 of 100 signed by both King and the illustrator, Bernie Wrightson, with an original drawing, as issued
King, Stephen. Cujo. Lettered copy I/26.
King, Stephen. The Dead Zone. Inscribed to Richard with “Best Wishes” in 1979.
King, Stephen. Different Seasons. Nicely inscribed to James on 7/17/1982.
King, Stephen. The Dark Tower series. Signed, numbered set #128.
King, Stephen. Eyes of the Dragon (Philtrum Press). Copy 263.
King, Stephen. Eyes of the Dragon (Philtrum Press). Copy 680
King, Stephen. The Gunslinger (trade first). Inscribed to James on 7/17/82.
King, Stephen. The Gunslinger (uncorrected proof)
King, Stephen. Misery (pre-publication proof for Book of the Month Club). Red stamp. Ahearn King 43a.
King, Stephen. The Plant (at least vols. 1-2). Copies sent to Eric and Laura Norden.
Some of these items may not have unique markings that identify them as Strand’s copies. However, if someone offers both Jim Strand’s inscribed copy of The Gunslinger and an uncorrected proof, there’s a good chance they were both stolen at the same time.
—Scott Brown, Downtown Brown Books
Technically, people do win the rare-book-and-antique lottery, but it is uncommon enough that they can make a television program about it (Antiques Roadshow). The vast majority of deals that seem too good to be true are just that. Consider the Bay listing for The Stand. The seller didn’t know enough to include Stephen King’s name or the fact that the book was inscribed in the listing title. The description was written by AI based on the photos. Yet lots of people bid on it hoping to get a deal.
The Stand seller is not the only criminal who has been quick to adopt AI. Earlier this year, law enforcement recovered a number of Strand items from a the fence who sought advice on selling the material from Google’s Gemini chatbot. In that case, the AI gave them too good of an answer—the dealer Gemini recommended was a real professional and immediately knew the material had been stolen from James Strand.
Absolutely fascinating read and glad at least one of the dipshit scum wads who perpetrated this was traced and most of these treasures were recovered. Karma will root out as it will.
Anybody go down for this yet? Or is the law still tied in knots trying to get a little justice? Fortunately for my collections my dogs are not constrained to read the Miranda rights to intruders.