My Great-Uncle Sam owned a bookshop in the heart of downtown St. Louis, called A. Amitin Books.  The shop closed about five years ago, but there's always been a great appreciation for literature in my family, mostly through my mother — an English teacher at Mayfield Jr. School, who raised me on Dickens, Alcott, Swift and, of course, Shakespeare.  Like most readers of classic literature, all of these books appear in our family's library in the living room and they've all been read.

I've always wondered what these books looked like when they were first printed; what colors were used for the cover, what font and spacing for the story, what the title page looked like, and so on.  So when I walked into the Craftsman-style home-tuned-office with the "Sharpe's Rare Books" wooden placard on the front at 569 S. Marengo Street, I got to see what I've always imagined.

Michael Sharpe and his team of expert antiquarian librarians buy and sell first editions.  The books are for sale, but they are available for viewing by anyone with curiosity, as opposed to, say, certain libraries in the area with similar collections.

"These are investments," Sharpe says.  "They're like mutual funds.  You buy a few, some grow in value more than others, but they rarely, if ever, devalue."

That may sound like he treats these books as objects, but he's been a collector for years.  He didn't choose books for the money —  he could have put his money into those investments, but instead he chose books.

He may have chosen wisely.  On his shelves are first editions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Thoreau's "Walden" and Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," just to name a few.  

He owns 165 of the 400 or so books on the influential collector's list, "Printing and the Mind of Man," which, Sharpe estimates, may be the most complete collection among collectors.

The biggest prize in Sharpe's collection is a ratty piece of papyrus, two inches squared, torn apart and almost as dark as the ink it's printed on.

It's a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls —  a scripture from Genesis.

His collection may be one of the most thorough private collections in the nation, if not the world.

Sharpe, who got his money from starting a financial group called Trimerica, started collecting 21 years ago, when he was in Cape Cod on vacation.

"I walked into an antiquated book store and found [John C.] Fremont's "The Exploring Expedition, 1842-43," Sharpe says. "I just finished reading a book about him, I was so excited to buy it."

Sharpe is an avid fan and collector of manifest destiny and gold rush materials —  hanging on the wall of the staircase in his business is a near-mint copy of a map drawn in the early 1800s (Florida is roughly correct, and Maine too, but California is shown as an island). 

His interest in the subject stems from his family, specifically his great-great-grandfather, who was one of the first on the Oregon Trail.

"When I came back to California," Sharpe continues, "I stumbled into Heritage Book Shop [on Melrose, in Los Angeles —  now closed], and I started buying sets.  My first three leather-bound sets were Jules Verne, Mark Twain and Victor Hugo.  I had discovered this brand new world of books I didn't know existed prior to that."

He's been collecting ever since and it's a beautiful, well-versed collection, with over $10 million in net-worth —  a testament to both the type of books he buys and the quality in which they are kept.

For more information on Sharpe's Rare Books, call their offices at (626) 405-2934, or visit during their office hours, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.