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Item ID: 4765

Thanks to Doyle Bennett for preserving this. See the related exchange in the Forums, where Doyle wrote,

"My wife recently purchased a signed, first edition of 'The Plague & I' through a dealer in Washington state. While leafing through the book, a faded sales receipt from Frederick & Nelson department store in Seattle fell out.

"The date is almost too faded to read but the year seems to be either 1950 or 1958 (the year she died). The amount of the sale is $2.75, the exact cost of the book as it appears on the dust jacket. There are two lipstick prints on the receipt as well.

"I'm trying to find out what dates, if any, she signed books at the F & N store in Seattle during those years and if, perhaps, she left the lipstick impressions on this sales receipt at the request of the book buyer or, as something she did as a matter of practice, either occassionally or all the time. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!"


UPDATE: Your tech team has enhanced the date portion of the scan; our opinion is March 13, 1956. And yours?

(The last digit is not an 8, and Betty died on 20 Feb, 1958, which might well have impeded her attendance at the book signing. For the last digit to be a zero it would be only about half the height of the other numerals, and I know of no key-strike printer that did so - this is years before dot matrix; not also that other zeroes on the page are the same height as adjacent characters. The juxtaposition of the M and A in MAR probably is a paper registration problem in the printer. Note that it occurs again below in the word Date. FA)


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