Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2002 Issue
The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay
With eBay you not only cut out the middle man but you also cut out much of the flowery descriptive language on which our business depends for redemption. With eBay, books are strictly reduced to a cursory description and a monetary figure – no more nodding to historical precedent and the book’s ultimate place in history, no more time to waste talking about where best to place this collection or why you’re the perfect person to appreciate this rarity. With eBay books become just another commodity, like dolls or furniture or jewelry or even, dare we say it, art.
eBay also further democratizes the process beyond the traditional dealer to collector or auction house to collector model. As the internet has proved time and time again – and perhaps never so clearly as with eBay – technology does not discriminate. Whereas not everyone can afford to subscribe to auction house catalogues or can walk into a high-end rare books shop and be treated with respect rather than raised eyebrows, just about anyone with access to a computer (it need not even be their own!) and an interest in playing along can participate in the eBay auction process.
One would think that all of this democratization and tearing down of the Berlin walls would be a good thing for the rare book business; but alas it is not always seen as such, particularly by the players with the most at stake should eBay continue to succeed. Let’s face it: there is a segment – some might even say a sizeable segment – of the rare book business that thrives on the very preciousness-read-elitism of its world. For this faction eBay and other auction internet sites have had roughly the same effect on the rare book business as Dorothy did when she abruptly opened the curtains surrounding the “Wizard” of Oz: they reveal the very paucity of the there, there (as Gertrude Stein-via-Judy Garland might have put it.)
In conclusion, I’d say that eBay is a wonderful, powerful, and potentially dangerous tool that should be indulged and invested in seriously only by educated consumers and only under the strictures outlined above. While eBay does not disband the rare book business as we know it it does turn it on its side, triangulating it to allow more and less specialized players to enter the sandbox. But the thing is, children, we all still have to play fair. And I’d still be as skeptical about the possibility of finding an overlooked original autograph copy of the U.S. Constitution on eBay for $100 as I would be if my mythological son or daughter came home and told me that they found a diamond in their playground’s sandbox. Which is to say, first, I’d wonder what it was doing there, and second, I’d wonder if it wasn’t simply a flashy bit of ordinary rock rather than a valuable gem that I could sell and retire on the proceeds of.
