As well as setting off on real-life adventures, one of our favourite ways to ‘travel’ is by reading books.
Reading about distant lands or local landmarks can capture our imaginations and turn us into explorers as well as inspire future travel ideas. Bookstores and libraries around the world have also become literary landmarks in their own right—one such landmark being Collectors Treasury in Johannesburg, South Africa.
More than a whopping one million volumes are crammed into almost every corner of this eight-storey bookstore in Johannesburg’s CBD. It’s the largest shop selling rare and used books in Africa and possibly the entire Southern Hemisphere, and a bookworm’s absolute dream.
It’s a mystery to most who have visited the store how it keeps track of its colossal collection, yet brothers Jonathan and Geoffrey Klass, who co-own the bookstore, have managed to keep it growing.
The brothers opened the store in 1974 in a shop above a garage and since had to relocate to a space large enough to accommodate the massive accumulation of books.
Visitors to Collectors Treasury will find themselves in a sea of second-hand books from the moment they step through the door. Books are wedged into every corner and across any surface that will support them. They line the walls stacked in towering piles, and even occupy a bit of space in the elevator. Upstairs, downstairs, on the floor, in the passages, and in any number of nooks and crannies—books are simply everywhere.
Browsing through the literary labyrinth naturally takes time, but a studying eye will be able to find rare books from around the world, including first-edition prints of titles and ones that are out of print.
The brothers describe themselves as having ‘the largest used and rare book shop in Africa, and in the Southern Hemisphere, having 1,000,000 plus items on hand. In addition to books, there are substantial offerings of maps, old engravings and prints, printed ephemera, periodicals, newspapers, and photographica. Collectors Treasury also deals extensively in records, with a stock of over 300,000 vinyl and 78rpm discs. We also have an extensive range of small antiques and collectables, with strong emphasis on the decorative arts 1870-1970.’
Apart from the books, the large displays of antiques and small collectables are also worth giving the time to browse through.
Although Collectors Treasury do not have their own website, about 70,000 of their books are listed on various other sites, where these literary delights and other rare finds can be ordered.
Pictures: She Said, Under our own olive tree, Collector’s Treasury, gussilber Instagram
