A QUEANBEYAN charity bookshop has collected some of the odd, intriguing personal treasures left within the pages of pre-loved reads.

Assorted ticket stubs, business cards, a love letter, newspaper clippings, and an itemised bill for hats and hosiery from Winns Department Store in Oxford Street, Sydney, circa 1959.

Not surprisingly, bookmarks and photographs are also a common find in secondhand books, says Queanbeyan Lions Community Bookshop volunteer Karen Abbott.

“We’ve collected all sorts of interesting things,” Ms Abbott says.

“Sometimes you get quite excited by what you find.”

Having slipped out from between the pages of books, volunteers have collected random selections of postcards, boarding passes, school identification cards, an expired British passport and photo-booth snaps from the ’40s.

The volunteers have also unearthed more juicer finds.

“There was a collection of photos once and the clothing that the young woman had on – some of the time – might give away her occupation, she was obviously at home and had set the camera up in the lounge room,” says Queanbeyan Lions Club vice-president, and bookshop volunteer Max Carrick.

Some things found are lucky.

“There was $80 in one book, and another time two $100 notes were hidden within the pages,” says Karen Carrick, another bookshop volunteer.

“People have put them away for a rainy day and forgotten about them.”

Other finds are unusual.

“I found a dead bird once,” says Ms Carrick.

“It came from Braidwood in a box of books that must have been stored in a farm shed. It had obviously died a long time ago because it was quite dessicated.”

Perhaps the best-case scenario is when volunteers picked up novels and found the author’s signature inside.

“It was David Attenborough’s book, ‘Living Planet’, signed by the author himself, but someone bought that,” says Mr Carrick.

Some of the more intriguing treasures are handwritten notes tucked inside donated books.

“It’s likely they’ve been used as bookmarks and then forgotten about,” says 82-year-old bookshop volunteer Julia Smith.

“There’s a letter from a father to his son Herman, written in German, and sent from Berlin in 1968,” Ms Smith says.

But the “sweetest” find is a love letter, hand-written on a notebook page which reads:

Hey baby, hope you have a great day. Thank you for the time you’ve spent with me. You make me happy by just being with me. I love you all the way up to the sky. I can’t wait to see you, my love, my darling and my favourite. I miss you and I’ll see you real soon. All my love, Timmy. 

PS I left a hug and a kiss for you with Jimmy Junior.

Since its inception, almost four years ago, the Queanbeyan Lions Community Bookshop has raised more than $130,000 for community projects, from the sale of donated books.

Sometimes entire family photo albums get caught up in bulk donations, Ms Abbott says.

“We get a lot of deceased estate material,” says Ms Abbott.

“When the families go into their loved ones homes and pack up all the old books, they are often not looking properly and I think that’s where a lot of the old photo albums are coming from.”

Recently, Ms Abbott has taken to Facebook in the hope of reuniting lost albums with their owners, sometimes with great success.

“We had a very old family photo album dating back to the 1860s, it was in a leather cover and it came from England,” she says.

“I posted about the album on Facebook and eventually, a lady from Perth believed it was her great-great grandfather’s, and so I posted it to her. “When she received it she said she could see her family’s resemblance in the photos, so that was a lovely ending for that one.”

Ms Abbott is also trying to track down the owner of the Ghoury family photo album from 2018, and a collection of one family’s Santa’s photos taken between 2014 and 2019. 

“They came in a box and it had every Christmas photo over a six-year period with Santa, including one family photo from the Arctic Circle,” says Ms Abbott.

“It’s obviously been caught up in a donation of books and I’m pretty sure the family would want them.”

Some of the more special moments are when volunteers discover that a book contains an inscription.

“We had a pile of books from 1895-1905, they had inscriptions in copperplate handwriting in the front, and people had won the books as prizes for Sunday school,” said Ms Carrick. 

“Finding these kinds of personal things puts a human element into the book, and makes you realise that it actually once belonged to someone,” Ms Abbott says.

The Lions Community Bookshop, 146 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan, open 10am-4pm, Thursday-Saturday.