Rare Stephen King First Print Books, Papers Accidentally Destroyed
Gerald Winters, a long-time Stephen King fan, just lost almost all of his irreplaceable collection of original manuscripts and first editions to plain bad luck. A water main burst in front of his store in that one time he picked to temporarily move the items to his basement, which has been flooded in the incident.
Winters have traveled the world for more than twenty years to collect items for his rare book collection, which was mostly comprised of every edition of Stephen King books he could lay hands on. The rarer items, which include typed manuscripts, first print editions, and signed originals, were among those damaged by the basement flood.
On the morning of Jan. 16, Tuesday, a water main burst on Main Street in Bangor, Maine right in front of his establishment, according to The Bangor Daily News. The ensuing outburst of water immediately flooded the business, Gerald Winters & Son, and dumped water into the basement.
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The basement, which was then filled with rare pieces of King novels, translations, collector's editions and even some of the manuscripts that the author typed himself, was flooded with chest-high water.
The collection would not be down there under normal circumstances. It just happened that Winters was reorganizing the upper floors of his shop at the time.
"You can't replace this stuff," Winters said, as quoted by Gizmodo. In his estimate, almost 90 percent of his collection was ruined, and it's not just Stephen King's stuff, too. Rare signed works from J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin were also destroyed in the flood.
"There's a first edition of 'Pet Semetary'," he noted, gesturing to a soaked book that he plucked out of the flood. Winters reckon that about 2,000 books were destroyed by the flood, including seven of the original Stephen King manuscripts in his keeping.
