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The most valuable magazine is the first-ever Playboy, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover ($7,000), and the most prized dirty book is one of the seven remaining original copies of My Secret Life, a Victorian hard-core sex diary ($500,000). But the erotic artifacts most fantasized about are the possibly apocryphal blue movies made by mainstream stars like Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford. If these films do exist, says Rotenberg, their discoverer would make a mint.

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His wife sighs indulgently. She writes the introductions to his books, and her only qualm with the collection is that it has taken over the house. The photos are organized in binders, and the binders are multiplying: Victorian hard-core, Edwardian postcards, fifties cheesecake—which is itself subdivided into blondes, twosomes, threesomes, big breasts, fetish, famous models, Irving Klaw, bondage, whips, Asian, black, and older women. At the request of Dian Hanson, head of Taschen’s Sexy Books division, there’s even a category for dirty feet. “I don’t even keep the Playboys anymore,” says Rotenberg. “How many copies of June ’73 does one person need?”