The obvious lesson: never throw anything away Once in a very long while, a rare book or manuscript discovery is so remarkable that it makes national headlines. In 1988, for instance, an anonymous Massachusetts collector recovered an 1827 first edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane from a roadside barn. Many will also recall the 1989 story of the man who found an original broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden inside a picture frame that he bought at a Pennsylvania flea market for $4 (and later sold at Sotheby's for $2.4 million). Or the discovery of the manuscript of...