Selling a Book by Its Cover - NYTimes.com:
IT took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-colored leatherbound books for a “gentleman’s library” in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager. Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheep skin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr. Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative “book solutions,” as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse.
... considering my predilection for collecting books, particularly those numbered, signed Ziesing editions of favorite authors. If I did have the standing for snark, I'd make a crack about preferring my books bound in the hide of the Amur leopard, with endpapers made from the scales of butterfly wings harvested from butterfly wing paintings acquired at auction, and hand stitched using the silk of the Javanese
Cricula trifenestrata. You have no such items? I'll adjust my monocle and bid you a good day, sir.
