Collectible Book Categories – What rare books will I collect?
I would like to encourage you to take a moment and consider why you are a book collector, or why you are thinking about building a book collection. Assembling a jumble of books is one thing; building a choice personal library is another. Which are you doing? Is your collection a hodge-podge of titles gathered willy-nilly? Or do you have a definite purpose in mind?
Good collections are developed around a theme or purpose. In the book collecting game, there are no limitations (except perhaps budgetary), and you can create any library that you wish to have. What is your focus? Are you interested in collecting all of the works of certain authors, or the finest works on a specific topic, or all of the imprints of a printer, or town, or county?
A great place to see many categories of book collecting is at the Books section of eBay. The listings this morning had the following categories and numbers of auctions within each category.
Americana (3,197)
Art & Photography (4,670)
Biography & Memoir (3,720)
Children’s (8,826)
Cooking (896)
Exploration & Travel (2,199)
Fraternal, Social Organizations (271)
History (7,379)
Illustrated (1,731)
Law & Government (799)
Literature (20,026)
Military & War (2,524)
Natural History (1,079)
Philosophy (460)
Pulps (287)
Reference (2,199)
Religion & Spirituality (5,136)
Science & Medicine (2,324)
Sports (824)
Vintage Paperbacks (3,320)
Not Specified (37,397)
Each of these is further broken down into subcategories. History, for instance, had the additional subcategories:
Africa (106)
Agriculture (1)
American (US) (1)
Ancient (169)
Anthropology (1)
Archeology (1)
Architecture (3)
Art History & Criticism (1)
Asia (225)
Australia, Oceania (1)
Bibliographies, Indexes (1)
Business (1)
Canada (241)
Central America (54)
Christianity, Bibles (5)
Classics (2)
Earth Science (1)
Europe (1,034)
Fine Arts (3)
Foreign Militaries (3)
Genealogy (1)
Literary (1) Middle East (82)
Modern (2)
Movie (2)
Music (1)
Mystery (1)
Nonfiction (6)
North America (1)
Performing Arts (1)
Photography (3)
Physics (1)
Political (3)
Reference (1)
Royalty (1)
School Yearbooks (21)
South America (55)
Theater (1)
Travel (1)
US Armed Forces (3)
Wars Involving US (9)
Wars Throughout History (2)
World (328)
Not Specified (4,916)
The collecting field just within the category of history is enormous. The same is true for other categories. You can come up with an endless array of collectible book interests.
For tips on buying collectible books on eBay, see our series on eBay buying.
Another place for ideas is a site like Barnes & Noble. You can go to their main page, hit “Books” and choose to view all categories. Dozens of particular genres will be displayed.
I collect bibliographies, author biographies, reference works on the book trade, and items of local historical interest. Almost all other books I have to consider as for sale, and try not to get too attached to them. I am building a collection of 18th century American imprints, but this is with a future catalogue in mind.
I encourage you to build a personal library around your interests. When you picture yourself settled into your favorite chair with a couple of hours of relaxing reading to enjoy, what would you like to be able to pull off of your shelves? Start building that library, the one that you will take pleasure in for years to come!
