Danie Immelman has been collecting stuff for more than 50 years but God has told him to “go smaller” and as part of that process he is looking for a buyer who can make use of his home library of almost 4 500 Christian books.
He has already disposed of his 19-year-old shop, Books and Bygones, in Central Port Elizabeth, and its contents, including antiques, collectibles, general books and about 15 000 Christian books — most of which are being sold for him in the northern areas of the city by a fellow church congregant.
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About six or seven years ago, he sensed God inspire him to start building up a library of Christian books for public use. But he got married soon afterwards and moved out of Central to a big old house in Walmer, where he says the library has been underused.
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He hopes that somebody who can make good use of his Christian book collection — mostly non-fiction and reference — will snap it up before he moves to a smaller townhouse in three weeks. The books include commentaries, dictionaries and histories for in-depth study, as well as books for general readers on apologetics, world religions, end times and many more themes. There are a few novels among the non-fiction works. The books are all in excellent condition. A few of the titles are in Afrikaans but most are in English. There are also 300 DVDs, including teaching videos and Christian movies. And there are about 100 music CDs.
“I believe the collection will be excellent for starting a church library,” he says. “The church can just decide what they want to put out. I believe they will find at least 3 000 titles they will be happy to put in their library.”
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Immelman says he spent about R200 000 to R300 000 on his library collection over the years. As a dealer he was able to buy books at wholesale prices but he still paid over R1 000 for some of the special books. Some of the books were ordered from overseas and others were ordered from a specialist supplier in Cape Town. The books fill a dozen bookshelves, each 1.2m wide and with seven decks of shelving. The shelves alone are worth R42 000.
He says the entire collection is for sale for R75 000, which works out at R25 per book in the 3 000 titles selected for the library. He will give the buyer the 12 bookshelves for free.
“If a church has R15 000 they can take the books and the shelves now and pay for the rest at R5 000 a month for 12 months. It makes it easy for a church which doesn’t have a quarter of a million rand to lay out on books to start a library with at least that value of books,” he says.
Anybody who is interested in buying Immelman’s book collection can call him at 083 328 08500 or 041 581 2347, or email him at danielim@iafrica.com,
