Treasure House Books & Gifts
Old Town Albuquerque's Signed-Book Bookstore, 1999–2026

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

The building before the books

The Treasure House story starts with a gift shop, not a bookstore. James Hoffsis — Jim — opened a small jewelry and gift store called Treasure House on the plaza in Albuquerque's Old Town on May 19, 1974. The location was 2012 South Plaza Street NW, a traditional adobe-walled storefront facing the central plaza and the gazebo, steps from San Felipe de Neri Church. Old Town itself dates to 1706, when Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdes laid out the original settlement around that same plaza. Three centuries later, it remains a tourist district of galleries, restaurants, and small shops operating out of thick-walled adobe buildings under covered portals. Jim Hoffsis chose well when he chose the plaza.

For twenty-five years, the store operated as a gift and jewelry shop. Jim and his wife Joe Ann ran it as a family business — no employees, no complications, no shareholders. Jim was also deeply involved in Albuquerque's historic preservation community, eventually serving on the city's Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission. He cared about Old Town as a place, not just as a retail location, and that sensibility infused the business from the start.

Jim and Joe Ann retired in 1999. That transition is where the bookstore begins.

John Hoffsis and the pivot to books

John Hoffsis, Jim's son, had already been running his own bookstore when his parents retired. Rather than let the Treasure House space go dark, John moved his book inventory into the plaza shop and transformed it. The gift-shop fixtures came out; bookshelves went in. The name stayed — Treasure House Books and Gifts — but the emphasis shifted decisively to books.

John established two rules for the store that never changed over the next quarter century. First, every book in the shop had to be about New Mexico or the Southwest. Second, every book had to be written by a New Mexico author. No exceptions. This was not a general-interest bookstore that happened to have a regional section. It was a regional bookstore that happened to have nothing else.

The result was a tightly curated inventory of over 3,000 titles. The subject coverage ran deep: New Mexico history and travel, Native American culture, the Old West, Hispanic heritage, southwestern mystery fiction, regional cookbooks, and children's books with New Mexico settings. The store also carried music CDs — Native American flute, western, and regional recordings — along with selected gifts that fit the New Mexico theme. But books were the heart of the operation, and signed books were the signature.

The signing culture

What set Treasure House apart from every other bookstore in Albuquerque — and from most bookstores anywhere — was the sheer volume and consistency of its author signing events. John Hoffsis hosted book signings almost every Saturday or Sunday afternoon for over two decades. That is not an exaggeration. Weekend after weekend, year after year, New Mexico authors sat in the shop on the plaza and signed copies of their books for tourists, locals, and collectors.

The roster of authors who appeared at Treasure House over those years reads like a directory of New Mexico literature. Anne Hillerman, continuing her father Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee series, was a regular presence. Regional historians including Loretta Hall, Richard Melzer, Don Bullis, and David Holtby appeared. Max Evans, Steven Havill, and dozens of other mystery, history, and nonfiction writers participated. If you wrote a book about New Mexico and you lived in New Mexico, the chances are strong that at some point you signed copies at Treasure House.

The practical effect of this signing volume was enormous. Treasure House pumped thousands upon thousands of signed copies into circulation over twenty-five years. Many of those copies went home with tourists who had walked into Old Town to see the plaza, wandered into the bookstore, and left with a signed Hillerman mystery or a signed Rudolfo Anaya novel as a souvenir. Others went to local readers who made Treasure House a regular stop. The cumulative result is that Treasure House signed copies are now one of the most common categories of signed regional-author books in Albuquerque estate libraries — and in estate libraries across the country, wherever those tourists eventually lived.

The SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR sticker

If you handle books from Albuquerque estates with any regularity, you have seen the Treasure House sticker. It is a small, round, adhesive label that reads SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. The store applied these stickers to the front cover or dust jacket of every signed copy in its inventory. The sticker served a retail purpose — it told a browsing tourist that the book on the shelf was not just any copy but a signed one, worth pausing over — and it now serves a provenance purpose that John Hoffsis probably did not anticipate when he ordered them.

Here is why the Treasure House sticker matters for authentication: the store arranged its own signings. When a Treasure House sticker says SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, it means the book was signed at an event that John Hoffsis organized, in a shop that John Hoffsis operated, with a sticker that John Hoffsis's staff applied. The chain of custody is short and direct. There is no intermediary, no consignment mystery, no question about whether the signature was added after the book left the store. The sticker is the store's own attestation that the signing happened under its roof.

This is particularly significant for two categories of New Mexico author signatures that appear constantly in estate libraries:

• Tony Hillerman signed copies. Hillerman died in 2008, so his signature pool is permanently closed. A Treasure House sticker on a signed Hillerman is a meaningful provenance indicator — it connects the signature to a specific retail environment where Hillerman (and later his daughter Anne) appeared and signed books. The sticker does not by itself prove the signature is authentic, but it provides a documented retail context that strengthens the case.
• Rudolfo Anaya signed copies. Anaya died in 2020, closing another major New Mexico signature pool. Like Hillerman, Anaya appeared at Albuquerque bookstores including Treasure House, and signed copies with the Treasure House sticker are common. The provenance logic is the same: the sticker connects the book to a known signing environment.

A general rule I follow: a Treasure House SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR sticker on a book by a New Mexico author is usually genuine because the store arranged the signings directly. I have handled hundreds of these over the years. The sticker tracks with authentic signatures at a very high rate. It is not infallible — nothing is — but it is one of the more reliable retail provenance markers in the Albuquerque book ecosystem.

Old Town context: why the location mattered

To understand what Treasure House was, you have to understand where it sat. Old Town Albuquerque is the original 1706 settlement, centered on a traditional Spanish colonial plaza. The San Felipe de Neri Church anchors one side; shops and galleries fill the surrounding adobe buildings. The district draws hundreds of thousands of tourists annually — people visiting the nearby Albuquerque museums, walking the plaza, buying turquoise jewelry and chile ristras.

Treasure House sat right on the plaza, with large glass windows set in thick adobe walls facing the gazebo. It was impossible to visit Old Town without walking past the shop. For a bookstore that depended on foot traffic from visitors who had not planned to buy a book, this was the perfect location. A tourist walks into Old Town to see the church and the galleries, notices the bookstore, steps inside, discovers a wall of signed copies by New Mexico authors, and walks out with a gift-quality signed book that costs the same as an unsigned copy anywhere else. That transaction happened thousands of times a year, every year, for a quarter century.

The tourist angle also explains the kind of books Treasure House sold most heavily. These were not deep literary cuts or obscure academic monographs. They were accessible, appealing books about New Mexico — the kind of book you buy as a memento of a trip or as a gift for someone back home who has never been to the Southwest. Mystery fiction was a major category because mystery readers are voracious buyers, and Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries were the quintessential New Mexico souvenir book. Regional cookbooks sold well because food is universal. History and travel books sold because Old Town visitors were already in a historical frame of mind. Children's books sold because families visit Old Town. John Hoffsis understood his customer.

The Atlas Obscura recognition

In May 2018, Atlas Obscura published its list of the 62 Best Independent Bookstores in the world. Treasure House Books and Gifts was on it. The recognition surprised no one who had visited the store — a tiny adobe bookshop on a 300-year-old plaza, carrying nothing but New Mexico literature, with signed copies lining the shelves — but it was meaningful validation for a family business that had never had a marketing department, a social media strategy, or any advertising budget beyond the foot traffic that Old Town itself provided.

The Atlas Obscura listing also brought a modest bump in destination visitors — people who came to Old Town specifically because they had read about the bookstore online. For a shop that had operated mostly on walk-in traffic, this was a late-career bonus. It didn't change what the store was or how it operated, but it did introduce Treasure House to a wider audience of bookstore enthusiasts and collectors who might otherwise never have found it.

What the store carried beyond books

Although books were the core, Treasure House was still technically Books and Gifts. The gift side was modest and tightly themed — Jim Hoffsis's original instinct for curated merchandise carried through even after the pivot to books. The store carried Native American flute CDs, western music recordings, selected Southwest-themed gifts, and a few categories of non-book items that fit the New Mexico identity. None of this competed with the books for shelf space or attention. It was supplementary, and it served the tourist customer who wanted something smaller or less literary than a book to take home.

The book inventory itself was organized by subject rather than by author — a sensible choice for a store where most customers were browsing by interest rather than looking for a specific title. The mystery section was prominent. The history section was deep. The cookbook section was popular. And throughout the store, the SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR stickers on the covers served as visual flags that drew attention and encouraged purchase decisions.

The closure

In early 2025, John Hoffsis announced that he intended to retire and was looking for a buyer who would continue the store's mission. He was explicit about what he wanted: not just someone to buy the building, but someone who was as committed to New Mexico authors and New Mexico books as he and his father had been. After more than fifty-one years in retail — counting his father's original gift-shop tenure — John said it was time to close this chapter.

He attempted to sell the business as a going concern. When no buyer who met his criteria materialized, he held a large clearance sale in mid-2025 to liquidate the remaining inventory. The Yelp listing was marked as permanently closed in January 2026. A fifty-one-year family business on the Old Town plaza — twenty-seven of those years as a bookstore — was finished.

The closing was covered by KRQE, the Albuquerque Journal, ABQ News (The Paper), and Shelf Awareness, among others. The coverage was uniformly elegiac. A bookstore that had been named one of the best in the world by Atlas Obscura, that had hosted author signings most weekends for a quarter century, that had never carried a single book that was not about New Mexico — there is no formula for replacing that.

How Treasure House books appear in estate libraries today

Treasure House books are now entering the estate pipeline in Albuquerque at a significant rate. Twenty-five years of sales — to tourists, to locals, to gift-givers — means that signed Treasure House copies have dispersed across the city and across the country. As the generation that bought those books ages and estates transition, the books come back into circulation. I encounter them regularly in Albuquerque estate libraries.

What to look for:

• The round SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR sticker on the front cover or dust jacket. This is the most common and most recognizable Treasure House marker. If you see it, check the title page for a signature.
• A Treasure House Books price sticker on the back cover or dust jacket. Sometimes present alongside the signed sticker, sometimes on unsigned copies.
• Treasure House bookmarks or receipts tucked between pages. The store produced printed bookmarks over the years, and occasionally a register receipt survives inside a book.
• The gift-purchase context. Many Treasure House books were purchased as gifts — for visitors, for out-of-state family, for Christmas. Look for gift inscriptions on the flyleaf ("To Mom, from my trip to Albuquerque, 2014") alongside author signatures on the title page. This dual-inscription pattern is characteristic of Treasure House tourist purchases.

The provenance implications for collectors

Treasure House provenance matters differently depending on what kind of book you are looking at.

For signed copies of major New Mexico authors with closed signature pools — Hillerman, Anaya, and others who have died — a Treasure House sticker is a meaningful authentication support. It does not replace proper first-edition identification or careful signature examination, but it provides retail-level provenance that places the signature in a documented context. For a serious authentication workflow, the sticker is one data point among several, and it is a positive one.

For signed copies of living New Mexico authors — Anne Hillerman, for example — the Treasure House provenance is less critical because the signature pool is still open. But it still confirms that the copy was signed at a legitimate retail event rather than through some unknown channel.

For unsigned copies of New Mexico-themed books, the Treasure House provenance is culturally interesting but does not significantly affect value. A Hillerman paperback with a Treasure House price sticker but no signature is worth the same as any other reading copy.

The important collector-facing point is this: Treasure House signed copies are common. Because the store produced such an enormous volume of signed books over twenty-five years, the existence of a Treasure House sticker on a signed copy does not make the book rare. It makes it authenticated at a basic retail level, and that is valuable, but the book is not scarce simply because it came from Treasure House. Scarcity, for these books, depends on the usual factors — edition, condition, the specific author, and the nature of the inscription.

Estate implications: what to do if you find Treasure House books

If you are clearing an estate and you encounter books with the Treasure House SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR sticker, here is what I recommend:

1. Do not remove the sticker. It is a provenance marker. Removing it destroys documentation that supports the signature's authenticity. Leave it in place.
2. Check the title page for a signature. The sticker means the store believed the book was signed. Confirm that the signature is actually there — occasionally a sticker survives on a book that has been re-jacketed or had its signed page removed.
3. Check whether the author's signature pool is open or closed. If the author has died, the signed copy has a different value profile than if the author is still signing books. Hillerman (died 2008) and Anaya (died 2020) are the two most common closed-pool authors you will find with Treasure House stickers.
4. Look for first-edition indicators. A signed first edition of a Hillerman novel with a Treasure House sticker is a different proposition from a signed later printing. The sticker is the same either way, but the edition matters for value.
5. Note the condition of the dust jacket. Treasure House books were often purchased as gifts and sometimes never read. Unread signed copies in clean dust jackets are the high end of what you will find. Read copies with shelf wear are the norm.
6. Consider the whole shelf, not just the signed books. If a household bought regularly from Treasure House, the collection may include unsigned copies of regional titles that are themselves interesting or valuable — out-of-print local histories, limited-run cookbooks, specialized subject matter.

Treasure House in the larger Albuquerque bookstore landscape

Treasure House occupied a unique niche in Albuquerque's bookstore ecosystem. It was not competing with Bookworks for the general-interest independent-bookstore customer. It was not competing with Living Batch for the literary reader. It was not competing with Page One for the browser who wanted 30,000 square feet of inventory. Treasure House had its lane — New Mexico books for New Mexico visitors — and it stayed in that lane for twenty-five years without deviation.

That disciplined focus is part of why the store lasted as long as it did. The same hyper-specialization that might seem limiting from the outside was actually a competitive advantage. No online retailer could replicate the experience of walking into a 300-year-old adobe building on a historic plaza and choosing a signed book from a shelf curated by someone who knew every author personally. Amazon could sell you a Hillerman novel, but Amazon could not sell you the experience of buying a Hillerman novel signed that morning by Anne Hillerman at a table in Old Town. That experience was Treasure House's product, and it could not be digitized or disrupted.

The broader history of Albuquerque's bookstores is a story of different stores serving different readers in different neighborhoods. Treasure House served the tourist and the gift-buyer in Old Town. Its books were accessible, signed, and themed to a place. When those books show up in estate libraries today, they tell you something specific about the household that owned them: these were people who visited Old Town, who cared enough about New Mexico to bring home a signed book, and who kept that book on a shelf for years or decades before it found its way to you.

The Hoffsis legacy

James and John Hoffsis were recognized by the Albuquerque Historical Society for their contributions to the city's cultural life. The recognition was earned. Jim built a business on the plaza in 1974 and ran it with his wife for a quarter century. John inherited that space and transformed it into something that Atlas Obscura would eventually call one of the best bookstores in the world. Together, father and son operated continuously on the Old Town plaza for fifty-one years.

More importantly for the purposes of this reference: John Hoffsis spent twenty-five years building personal relationships with New Mexico authors. He knew who was writing, who was publishing, and who would come to the store on a Saturday afternoon to sign books. He did not just stock books — he supported the ecosystem that produced them. Authors who might never have had a regular signing venue had one at Treasure House. New writers who needed a first retail outlet had one at Treasure House. The store was a node in the network of New Mexico literary culture, and its closure left a gap that no remaining store fills in quite the same way.

Why this page exists

I wrote this page because Treasure House signed books are one of the most common categories of provenance-marked books I encounter in Albuquerque estate libraries. Understanding what the sticker means, where it came from, and why it is a reliable indicator matters for anyone handling a New Mexico estate that contains books. It matters for collectors evaluating signed copies of Hillerman, Anaya, and other regional authors. And it matters as a historical record of a bookstore that did something distinctive for a very long time in a very specific place.

Treasure House Books is closed. The books it sold are not. They are on shelves across Albuquerque and across the country, marked with that round SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR sticker, carrying signatures that John Hoffsis arranged and witnessed. When you encounter one, you are holding a small piece of Old Town's literary history. Treat it accordingly.