They won’t be your last. With a typical wants list of about 500 items (this is the minimum number of wants we include in our various levels of service and up to 2,000 is possible, you will continue to find perhaps 4 to 6 very interesting matches a month and a few amazing discoveries each year. In time, you’ll develop a sense of the pricing in your chosen area(s) and you can, if you wish, begin to acquire material, confident that you understand availability and pricing in your chosen area.

One of the most common mistakes in book collecting is failure to establish a clear focus. You simply avoid this issue by working against a series of titles and editions that fit within your parameters. Later, and hopefully much later in your life, when you decide to sell your books, you’ll find them much easier to sell as a group via auction or to a dealer because your books will truly be a collection and not just shelves of printed material. Of course, if you decide to issue an electronic catalogue your clear focus will make the presentation even more compelling. In all probability you will be the expert in your chosen area because you’ll be paying attention to what shows up on the net and at auction in your area for many years to come. Of course it is essential not to overpay. Your own experience will be essential. In time you will gain full command of the ÆD(our database) that provides pricing history, guidance about rarity and typically many descriptions to read, to be sure you both understand the copy you contemplate buying as well as its relevance to you and its importance within your collecting scope. To build your collection you will need to be interested enough to check your “matches” from time to time. And once in a while you’ll probably want to revamp your "wants list" to reflect the average of 6,000 new records weekly we’ve been adding to the ÆD since launch on September 3rd, 2002.

Because interesting material is sold at auction, and because auctions are somewhat unpredictable in their offerings we include a unique way to follow all book auctions without the expense of buying auction catalogues and the investment of time to actually read every entry. The list of materials you select as a potential basis for your collection (your "wants list")is naturally matched against web listings everyday. This list is also compared each day to the specific contents of all book auctions worldwide. So if a specific title you have some interest in shows up in an upcoming auction you are going to know about it within a few hours. It may not be interesting enough to purchase but if it is you’ll know with plenty of time to prepare. And of course the realized price will tell you about the “market value” even if you don’t bid on it.

Because there will always be other potential materials within your collecting parameters, but not yet necessarily delineated in our database, we provide you with "keywords" by which to search all upcoming auctions for matches. If, like me, you are interested in materials that may contain the word "Poughkeepsie", you’ll find occasional matches for such books as histories of Poughkeepsie, Poughkeepsie imprints and any other titles or descriptions that contain this word. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to actually look at every auction for this type of material? With "Auction Keywords" it is automatic. You select the terms and possibly linked-terms and we evaluate every auction lot. Most collecting subjects require 10 to 15 keywords to thoroughly encompass them.