Here’s something I’ve never seen before: Someone wrote into their local newspaper with a question about rare books, and they actually gave a pretty good answer in the newspaper.
The question was:
I have a play book on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is 4 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches. It is a hardback book printed in 1917 by the McMillan Co. It is 173 pages. How could I find out if it is worth anything?
The answer is here in Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger.
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2 Comments
The question of “old” is relative to the actual contents of the book. Since the first book printed by Gutenberg was the Bible, and old Bible would date from the earliest period of printed books. However that doesn’t mean that later bibles are without value.
An old version of Shakespeare would also date from this earliest period, but there are many desirable versions from later editions. They may be valuable due to the eitorial content, from the illustrations, the desirabilty of the particular press or printing, etc.
“Old” as it relates to Mark Twain’s books relates to the period when they were first published in the 1800’s, and are generally a lot more desirable than Bibles printed in the same era.
And they left out the other factor that enters the value equation, desirability. Basically. does anyone want this? You can have the only copy of a book, definitely qualifying it to the over worked description of rare, but if no one wants it, who cares. On the other hand if you have one of 10,000 of a book that 1,000,000 people want, such as the first edition of the first Harry Potter book, the sky is the limit.
Happy selling,
THANK GOD someone said it. “Does anyone want this?” Old, rare, scarce, mint… doesn’t mean a damn thing if no one wants it. It’s basic supply and demand.