"As much as such prices might set a gold digger's heart racing, they are not usually what motivates book collectors, whose relationship to their objects of desire is varied and complex. At a Boston fair in October, I heard a dealer with an impressive selection of dust jacket art say, "Don't judge a book by its content." However tongue-in-cheek, this twisted aphorism exposes the curious fact that many collectors don't…
"Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
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Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#12Wow, I love how the physical copies of Fabrica are as interesting as their author and their historical context and importance to Western medicine. Another interesting copy is the one bound in human skin at Brown.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#13One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.) My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set…
The closest I have come is a copy of a museum exhibition catalog about Dieter Rams from 1981 that is signed by him. I bought it online. The copy was described as having a scribble on the front page and priced very low as a consequence. Years after, I saw Dieter’s signature somewhere and realized that my book was signed.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#14One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.) My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set…
My big find was a fair-condition copy of Graham Greene’s retracted second novel in a secondhand bookstore in Canada for CDN20. It’s not in collectable condition, by any means. The spine is angled and the dust jacket is missing, but just the opportunity to read this (not that good, to be honest) book and the delight of finding a copy that I could afford were a joy for me.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#15One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.) My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set…
I found a Canon 50mm ƒ/0.95 lens at an estate sale once. Not cheap by any means, but it was a delight to play around with, and then I sold it to KEH for a profit once I was done with it. https://bluemooncameracodex.com/technical-reviews/living-wit...
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#16Wow, I love how the physical copies of Fabrica are as interesting as their author and their historical context and importance to Western medicine. Another interesting copy is the one bound in human skin at Brown.
Another interesting copy is the one bound in human skin at Brown. Shouldn't that be at Miskatonic?
In a sense it is -- HPL based Miskatonic on his local hometown university -- Brown is in Providence.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#17With those annotations there must be enough material to publish a revised third edition of Vesalius' book.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#18"As much as such prices might set a gold digger's heart racing, they are not usually what motivates book collectors, whose relationship to their objects of desire is varied and complex. At a Boston fair in October, I heard a dealer with an impressive selection of dust jacket art say, "Don't judge a book by its content." However tongue-in-cheek, this twisted aphorism exposes the curious fact that many collectors don't…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku
I think that's a slightly different phenomenon.
Tsundoku is mostly about buying books with the intention to read them, but then not getting around to it.
But to many book collectors, the books are mainly or purely collection items, to be found, owned, sorted and looked at, but without any intention of ever reading most of them.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#19One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.) My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set…
How do you identify a valuable book? Are there some 1000 well known valuable items you keep in mind? Or are you looking inside every jacket hoping to find an author's signature on a 1st edition? I assume the price of a false positive is low (ie I'll buy these dusty books for $20), but sounds like a lot of legwork. I imagine it is definitively less sexy than the Ninth Gate
It depends on what you’re collecting but for pre-ISBN books, AbeBooks is the central marketplace for rare books so that’s one place to look up titles but most book collectors specialize, often in a very specific niches like certain authors or topics, usually restricted to a single era.
The hard part is tracking editions and verifying that you have a genuine first edition. Collectors depend on bibliographies which are themselves rare books that describe all the publications of a specific publisher or author and how to identify editions. Often there are marks but for valuable books it usually requires knowing the exact typos and changes between editions to authenticate them. There are a lot of counterfeits, both modern and contemporary to the original printing.
The other problem is that the vast majority of books are worthless unless they’re in very good condition. Not “good condition for their age” but damn near pristine, even if it’s hundreds of years old. If it’s falling apart, it’s almost certainly worthless, unless it’s an honest to god manuscript.
It’s mostly dependent on luck. It’s really hard to make a living with book collecting unless you’re running an auction house. Most companies handling estate sales are smart enough to check AbeBooks so the lucky life changing finds are getting rarer and rarer.
Re: "Bookfind of the century" sells for $2.23M
#20One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.) My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set…
My big find was a fair-condition copy of Graham Greene’s retracted second novel in a secondhand bookstore in Canada for CDN20. It’s not in collectable condition, by any means. The spine is angled and the dust jacket is missing, but just the opportunity to read this (not that good, to be honest) book and the delight of finding a copy that I could afford were a joy for me.
Do you think it was mispriced then, even given its condition, or did they know exactly what they had? Just wondering if you mean it was a steal, or that the price was right but still rare to find?