While many businesses used the pandemic lockdowns as an opportunity to develop their online presence, Wood, who had a successful gig selling rare books online, did just the opposite, signing a five-year lease and opening a storefront. StarTogether
“You know what?” Justin Daniel Wood remembers thinking during a difficult time in his career, “I have five books. Let me just put them on eBay.” The sale of those novels, including a signed copy of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” – which he bought from BMV on Bloor for $20 and sold for $150 – and first editions of Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion” and Richard Adams’ “Watership Down,” allowed him to acquire more.
After earning a degree in literature from York University, Wood learned the trade working at both Alexandre Antique Prints, Maps & Books and Contact Editions. He built his independent business as a regular vendor at the now-defunct Sunday Antique Market at St. Lawrence Market and by selling through eBay to private collectors and international and local educational institutions, including the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
Owing to the pandemic, the rent was “digestible,” Wood says, and he took possession of the space in November 2020, just in time for Toronto’s second lockdown. That interruption was, he says, “actually beneficial, because it allowed me to price everything and set everything up because I was waiting for bookshelves.”
“I just love to meet people who are interested in books and appreciate history and want to learn more,” Wood says. “What I’m trying to build here is the blending of history and art.” He even encourages shoppers to judge some books by their covers: he has labelled one section of The Scribe “Dust Jackets” while another celebrates “Beautiful Victorian Binding.”
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