After World War I the book trade enjoyed a time of relative prosperity, but with the Wall Street collapse in 1929, economic depression hit the commercial sector in many countries, the secondhand book trade being no exception. In the 1930s Tooley left Francis Edwards Ltd and opened The Atlas Bookshop, just off Charing Cross Road, and started dealing almost exclusively in antiquarian maps. Between 1932 and 1934 he collaborated with a Mr M. Sinelnikoff of Orion Booksellers Ltd. Sinelnikoff's passion was old maps, charts and globes, and with Tooley's interest, a fertile conjunction of scholarly minds was created. Tooley had always been interested in Colour Plate books, and in 1935 Batsford published his first book on the subject "Some English Books with Coloured Plates". When The Atlas Bookshop closed in 1936 Tooley started work at the Parker Gallery in Albemarle Street - the firm specialising in military and sporting prints as well as old maps. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939 Tooley found work as a telephone operator, but still worked with old books and maps in his spare time.