The Confessions of a Collector Part 13

Seeing that I have been up and down the market during a decently long succession of years, I am perhaps ent.i.tled to pay myself a few compliments on the singular rarity of occasions, which have found me on the losing and victimised side. Thrice have I suffered for my sins; for it was always my own fault. I handled things, which I did not understand; it is an error, against which I should urge every one to guard most strenuously. If you engage in the purchase of a strange commodity lying outside your own experience, it is marvellous in how many a way you are liable to the trumper. It is provoking to note the studious politeness, the almost brotherly interest, with which your friends will point out to you your sad mistake, when you have made it. For mysteries, to which you lack the key, _noli tangere_ is the maxim. There are plenty of objects always in the market, which are fair to the eye, but bitter in the proof. How grateful I was to the enthusiast in his teens, who, when I had wasted a five-pound note on a worm-eaten xylographic block, put down a couple of guineas for it, and left me only poorer by the difference!