Based on the photo of his library, it looks like P. Scott Rubin is a candidate for one of my favorite television shows --- Hoarders. Each week it profiles two individuals living in different parts of the country whose compulsive hoarding threatens to cost them their homes, spouses and/or children.

My wife accuses me of being a hoarder, but I hasten to point out to her that each coin board, folder or album is unique in some way and is necessary for my ongoing cataloging project. Nevertheless, she is not convinced that this justifies expanding the collection into the spare room.

After seeing George Kolbe's "vision" of P. Scott Rubin's library, I was reminded of the "bookstore" in the attached photo.

I regularly attend the conventions of the Mexican Numismatic Society in Mexico City and since I rarely stay at the host hotel, I take a micro bus from my hotel to the convention every morning. The route of the bus passes this bookstore, the Libreria Villanueva at 44-C Antonio Caso [Street], where I always see several industrious men sorting, pricing, and doing whatever it is that they do with those books. The store is always completely impassable, with a wall of towering books from the back to the front and side to side. There is no path through the books to the back of the store!

One day, I will have to get off the bus and find out the purpose of that store (other than, perhaps, to keep the workers busy).

Mexican bookstores are an interesting phenomenon. The owners never seem to discard any book, no matter how useless I would think it is. So the clutter tends to build up fast, and it becomes hard to find anything good, or anything at all.

I've visited the "good" used bookstores downtown with piles of books in front of the bookcases such that one cannot get books from either the bookcase or the pile (because its 6 feet high). They seem to be in no hurry to move inventory.