Two local stay-at-home mums find, restore and sell them on Instagram.
Two local stay-at-home mums find, restore and sell them on Instagram.
The thick paper, the attention-to-detail vintage illustrations, the matte covers, the look, the feel… Some are more than 70 years old, others are no longer in print, and all are increasingly rare and difficult to find.
The finer points are what make the classic originals here – Enid Blyton, Dr Seuss and Ladybird books – so different from their mass reprints in stores.
The fact did not go unnoticed by Justina Tey, 36, and Claire Lim, 39. “Vintage books tend to have that little extra spark,” says Justina. “It’s hard to find books with that kind of quality these days.”
So they started tracking the books down online or whenever they visited the UK and the US.
For both women, it began as a mission to build their personal libraries. Claire, whose love for children’s books was born during her time as a primary school teacher, says: “I started collecting these books when I was reading them to my students. When my kids came along, my collection just got bigger.”
For Justina, a self- professed bookworm, it was about wanting her own brood to experience the books she had loved as a child.
After they acquire the books, the painstaking process of restoring them to their former glory begins: giving them a good clean to remove dust and grime, taping back torn pages, as well as patching tears. Each batch can take hours to restore, depending on the condition the books are in.
It was then that they hit on the idea of sharing their coveted finds with other readers.
In October 2016, their Instagram bookshop, @oocs3, was born to sell them on a regular basis. Each book is pictured with details such as price, date of publication, content, and condition. The person quickest to comment on each picture gets first dibs on buying that book.
“It’s win-win on a few fronts,” says Justina. “These beautiful books find new homes and get a new lease of life, their new owners get introduced to good books, and some of our proceeds go towards charity.”
Follow @oocs3 on Instagram, or reach them at ouroldstorybooks@gmail.com
