The story of my single biggest business mistake during the last 58 years.

The story starts with the basis of my business - gaining the trust of wealthy men.  Since 1972 this has been my focus - accurately and honestly selling rare maps and atlases, rare books, Audubon aquatints and natural history watercolors working 16 hours a day, 360 days a year.   The horror was that some of my competitors were stealing maps from Libraries and undercutting me by just enough to make my prices appear to be too high but not too low to arouse suspicion.  So vindictively I have been working with the FBI to put these men in prison begging the judges after the trial not to give probation but instead a jail term 8 times.  It takes about 1000 hours each over 4 to 7 years to accomplish this.  What a far better father I would have been if this time had been spent with my seven children instead. 

Forbes Smiley was especially a huge pain because he was quite knowledgeable and put on a very convincing "waspy" presentation.  It broke my heart to lose my best clients to him time and time again over a 25 year period.  

Finally he was caught and I presented a 30 page single spaced report to my friends in the FBI on how to handle the investigation.   He finally cracked under the pressure of being exposed for the lies I told the agents he would tell and pleaded guilty. 

It was at this point that luck was hugely on my side.  The Chief Information Office of the NY Times, Elise Ross, was a dear friend and set up a story for me for the front page of the second section.

The published article that you will read also included a photograph of me raising my arms in victory!

So now I went to my friend Richard Edelman the world's greatest master of PR.  I  asked how to take advantage of this good fortune.   In hindsight his advice was genius.   Through his close relationship with Bill Gates we would create a national database of maps in all libraries in Universities and private collections with highly accurate images to establish indisputable provenance.  Then a national commission would be established with three famous collectors - Jerome Shestack, former president of the ABA, Martin Meyerson, former President of the University of Pennsylvania and James Billington, Librarian of Congress.   Richard set this all up and I would have had complete control of the map and atlas dealing business - an asset easily worth 250m even 20 years ago.  

But then came the invoice - $75,000 a month for 2 years.  $1,800,000 in total.   Yes, I did have the money but I simply assumed that the NY Times story would be enough.  A few days after the story the Coen brothers agent called me up about doing a movie and numerous other writers called asking for more information.  What did I need Richard Edelman for?  I knew better.  

I made the first payment to Richard and ended the relationship.

In hindsight this was a level of stupid pride that I have regretted every day for 20 years.    Richard's idea would have made me the statesman of my trade.   Instead it turns out that the Coen Brothers' movie had me as a villain whose competitive nature drove Forbes Smiley to a life of stealing.  ALL the following news stories and books cast me as an obnoxious, overbearing fool.  I didnt realize that all reporters want to sell papers and couldn't give a damm about me or the truth.  The peak of my pain was when I went to my four children's book selling Christmas party at their school in Middleburg, VA.  The top book on display for the event was the one that trashed me most abusively over this whole episode. 

My ability to handle my own PR was pathetic and cost me a priceless chance to leave a distinguished legacy.   At the end of my life I will die a merchant - a rich merchant but nothing more. 

Here is the story:

A Rival Is Charged, and a Map Dealer Wants to Say, 'Told You So'

By Alison Leigh Cowan

• Oct. 10, 2005

He considers himself an oracle and, yes, a bit of an opportunist, too. He says that nothing will make him sorrier than to be proved right. Yet he concedes that he could benefit financially, should it be proved that his archrival in the business of selling rare or important maps is found to be a thief.

Still, W. Graham Arader III, who has been criticized by clients and colleagues for years for his attacks on E. Forbes Smiley III, a leading competitor, says he is looking forward to vindication.

"I've been telling everybody that Forbes is a crook for 20 years, and everybody says to me, 'You just think the only good maps are the ones you have,"' Mr. Arader said in a recent interview.

He added: "I'm not a bag lady walking down Madison Avenue with a grocery cart filled with bottles. I'm the oracle that was ignored."

Not quite ignored but certainly doubted, until four months ago, when Mr. Smiley was accused of leaving Yale's rare-book library with several maps from its collection in his briefcase and jacket. Mr. Smiley has since been charged with three counts of larceny in Connecticut state court and is also being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about maps that disappeared from other institutions he visited.

Mr. Smiley has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Richard A. Reeve, said that neither he nor Mr. Smiley would have any comment on his case, Mr. Arader's accusation, or any other legal matter.

Mr. Arader, 54, has spent more than three decades operating in the rarefied but cutthroat world of maps, books, Americana and antiquities, eventually becoming known as the pre-eminent map dealer in the field.

At the same time, he has gained a reputation for attacking his rivals, Mr. Smiley among them. He once wore a wire to help put another famous map dealer behind bars for theft, and other dealers and some clients have said that his efforts are mostly motivated by money, revenge and age-old rivalries.

He certainly had more to lose than many others whenever Mr. Smiley came up with a new find or offered a map at prices below those set by the major dealers and auction houses.

Mr. Arader said many clients did question his integrity for quoting higher prices than Mr. Smiley did on similar merchandise, and chalked up his rants to jealousy, taking their business elsewhere. William Reese, a prominent rare book and map dealer in New Haven who helped Yale appraise the maps found with Mr. Smiley on the day of his arrest, said that he, too, had nursed suspicions about Mr. Smiley.

"The thing that never made sense is, here was this man who was always evidently broke and always writing people bad checks and owing people money, and yet he had all these fantastic maps," said Mr. Reese, who is one of several dealers who had billing disputes with Mr. Smiley. Some of the other dealers' disputes show up in court records. "The two just did not compute."

Still, Mr. Reese said he did not think it was right for Mr. Arader to now accuse others of being in on the suspected thefts.

"Graham has used this whole unfortunate business to try to attack other dealers who are his competitors," Mr. Reese said. "I think it's extremely unlikely that the particular people he's accused of being in cahoots with Smiley are in cahoots. They bought things from Smiley thinking they were buying things that were legitimately on the market."

Mr. Arader said he had every right to question the behavior of other dealers and collectors, given how loyally and lavishly he had served his clients: taking maps to their homes to save them the trip, framing and hanging their purchases, writing checks to their favorite charities, and dashing off to their soirees when he felt he should have been spending time with his seven children, ages 7 months to 21 years old.

That Mr. Smiley has been accused of taking items from Yale, Mr. Arader's alma mater, only makes Mr. Arader angrier. At Yale, he said, he focused on "blondes and squash," but became interested in maps after he met Alexander Orr Vietor, the curator of Yale's map collection. Before long, Mr. Arader was selling maps from his dormitory room. "I love maps, and when you get hooked, you get hooked," he said.

For all his moral certitude, Mr. Arader acknowledges that his own buying and selling habits have not always been above reproach. For instance, he once bought old atlases, which he cut up to retrieve the maps inside, much the way hunters display the horns of a prize buck on their mantels but discard the carcass. Cutting the books was legal since he owned them, rival dealers say, but it set a lot of teeth on edge. 

Mr. Arader insists that he long ago abandoned that practice. "I was a Visigoth," he said. "It made people crazy. I don't do it anymore."He also sees nothing untoward about his and Mr. Reese's joint purchase nine years ago of Thomas Jefferson's Proclamation of the Louisiana Purchase. They bought it for $772,500 and quickly resold it for $1 million. Mr. Arader acknowledged that the document, signed in 1803 by President Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, might once have been government property. But he said the legal spats over the document's provenance had been worked out before he bought it.

Not that he did not have some explaining to do. Mr. Arader's daughter Josephine, now 20, recalled how thrilled she was to learn about that part of history by reading Jefferson's own words. But when she told her teacher where she had received her information, she said she was sent to the principal's office for lying.