A battered copy of The Successful Stroke Survivor is propped up on the windowsill.

My battered copy features a much-reproduced photograph from post-war America: an entranced cinema audience, all wearing 3D glasses.

The scruffiest book in the sale is one of the most touching, an extremely battered copy of the Shorter Oxford dictionary.

I recently found a battered copy of "A short history of Australia" published in about 1910, and bought it for $A1.50.