Patience is important. That’s what I really want to say. Patience is important.
See, there’s this book, The Ghost of Dibble Hollow (by May Nickerson Wallace, whom I know exactly nothing about). It’s a kids’ adventure book from 1965, about a boy who spends the summer in the country, in a house that’s long abandoned but has been in his family for a long time. He meets the ghost of his great-uncle, who died as a boy way back when. Not a great book, but enjoyable and readable. I had a copy when I was young but I don’t know what happened to it.
I decided a few years ago to try to track down another copy, partly because I liked the book and partly to use for inspiration for this one project I’ve had on the back burner for a while. And it turned out to be really hard to find. When I checked on abebooks.com and alibris.com, all I could find were copies for like $50, $80 bucks. Which, forget that.
So I bided my time and kept my eyes open. And earlier this month I was at a used book sale where I plucked a copy of The Ghost of Dibble Hollow off one of the kids’ tables for a buck.
Math: $50 cost + patience = $1 cost.
Matthew Elmslie 
I had a very similar experience…found a copy of “The Ghost…” at a flea market, and was utterly thrilled for the rest of the weekend. Great kid-lit…had a short correspondence with the author re: the story rights, but Disney owns them (though has been sitting on them for about 40 years now. Grrrr…).
That’s interesting. I guess we have to conclude that if Disney was going to do something with it, they would have done it already. Doesn’t seem like their kind of thing for these days.
I’m in that position now, it took me years to find out the title and now it’s out of my price range.
Best of luck! There’s one out there somewhere; it’s inevitable.
Good way to test my manifesting powers 🙂
Maybe you can answer me this- is this the story where a stamp was hidden in a box up in a tree and was only discovered after a lightening strike? It must be 40 plus years since I read it, that’s what I recall (and the ghost called Miles.)
Ghost named Miles, definitely; I just flipped through the book and didn’t see anything about a stamp in a box in a tree. And I don’t remember it, either, although it does ring a faint bell. The only hidden stamp I remember from books I read as a kid is the one in *Alvin’s Swap Shop* (Clifford B Hicks). (And of course the one from the movie *Charade*.) There is a treasure hidden in a tree in *Dibble Hollow*, but it’s not like that.
Thanks for replying and having a look through!
I found a lady has uploaded herself reading it on YouTube so I’ve been listening to it! Amazing to revisit it after so long.
🙂
That’s neat. Sorry for the delay; I wasn’t getting notifications of comments.