Book Collecting in the Age of the Internet

Now Ill tell you about one other book and then move on. This next title is the other book Bill Heidgerd told me about. It is called Tom Quick, The Indian Slayer and it was published in Monticello, New York, in 1851. Mr. Heidgerd told me this book is very uncommon, if not quite as rare as Bevier's. Two years ago a New Jersey dealer offered me a complete, if shaken copy, for $225. I was then offered a copy by another dealer. That one, it turns out, had a variant cover but seemed entirely original. The price was high: $1,600. I wasn't going to buy it, but then a copy came up at Sothebys in November 2001. This copy was rebound and sold for $4,800 including hammer. I could barely restrain myself to inquire of this dealer if the copy he had offered (and I had unceremoniously ignored) was still available. As it was I bought it. Since then two more copies have come up, one a slightly impaired first edition for $150, and the other, a copy of the 1894 reprint which I finally bought for $110 after watching it sit on the web at $150 for a full year. I suspect the reprint is much rarer than the original. In any event, I now expect to receive 500 emails from people who have cartons full of these books and my education will be complete.

All this is to illustrate the power of the net and to show that the net is changing the meaning of rare. It was once difficult, if not almost impossible to find many books. Today, when you know how to use the net, the possibilities are limitless. For those of you who may not yet be book collectors, I say welcome and wow. You are like the first settlers to arrive in the new world. All is before you. Few people are interested in books. At a guess, only about 1 in 1,300 people are passionately committed to books. If you are one of the lucky ones this is a very good moment for you. To paraphrase Mae West, So many books, so little time.

Now Im going to talk about the relationship between book collectors, auction houses and book dealers. The only spot market in the book business is auction sales. These sales aren't perfect. They are often not well publicized. They are always limited. Condition varies widely. But they are the only opportunity both where transactions occur at a specific point in time and a record of the transaction is recorded. Think about it for a second. Dealers have list prices. When and if they sell, the net price is known only to themselves and to their buyer. They may have asked $500 and sold it immediately for that price or they may have sold it for $400 a year later. Dealer sales methodology simply doesn't lend itself, other than peripherally, to the construction of a database of transactions. Market pricing is established at auction and this information is essential to understanding the market. Your books are not worth what you paid for them. Rather, it is a case of supply and demand. They are worth what they bring when you sell them. Analyze auction prices less the sellers commission to understand what that number is.

There are then two important variables to discuss. The first are the prices paid by the collector. It is easy to overpay. Any seller, be they an auction house with a pre-sale estimate that is very high, a dealer with a strong asking price, or an online seller who is comparably aggressive, may have exaggerated impressions of a book's value. Buyers have to know when not to buy. They must know when the price is fair.

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Book Collecting in the Age of the Internet

Rare Book Monthly

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Book Collecting in the Age of the Internet

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