The Collectible Book Blog

By S. P. Wurth

This will be the first of several articles on developing research skills for rare book buying.  The secrets discussed here are also invaluable for selling rare books.  This blog post is one of series that we introduced under the title Buying Collectible Books on eBay.

In order to be a successful book collector, one must become skilled at research.  Those of you who collect coins are familiar with the phrase, “Buy the book before you buy the coin.”  That means that if you are going to spend money on a rare coin, first be sure that you know what you are buying.  Get the authoritative reference book on the series, and do your own inspection of the coin.  The same applies when one is investing in a collectible book.

The great thing about book research today is that the internet provides the book collector with a myriad of resources.  There will still be references that you will want to buy that are bibliographies specific to your field of interest, but for quick results on whether or not you want to set up your sniper to pick off that volume you spotted on eBay this morning, the internet will give you fast results.

The search engine that I use constantly is www.addall.com.  This site will quickly scan the 14 major online bookselling sites and deliver results to your screen.  You can search for both books in print and out of print (be sure to choose between those two options when you set up your search).  What this will tell you is how many copies of a particular book are being offered for sale, and at what price.  The results list has clickable links at the top of each column, allowing you to sort by price, bookseller, author, dealer, etc.  Oh, and what’s really cool: it’s a free service.

When you use addall, you will be able to quickly tell if the book you are looking at on eBay is common, scarce, or rare.  You can find out what you would have to pay for it if you bought it directly from a dealer – and sometimes you should do just that!  If you like what you see and find that it would be cheaper just to place the order online through the link at addall, go for it.

Results posted in addall may be skewed regarding how many copies of a particular book are on the market.  Book dealers often post their holdings to several online databases, and addall pulls from all of them and does not eliminate duplicates.  Keep that in mind and use your noggin when reviewing the results page.

Before I found out about addall, I used to use www.bookfinder.com.  That service works great too, and they are easier to use if you are searching for books in languages other than English.  You should try them both and see which you prefer.

Keep in mind that the prices listed in book dealer catalogs may be the prices at which the book DOES NOT sell.  In other words, if there are 10 copies available for a certain item in the $300-$350 price range, I can be pretty sure that $300-$350 is too high of a price for the book. If the scarce book sits in dealer catalogues without being sold, the price may be too high.

There is another, and often more accurate, way to determine the real value of a book.  Look for it in our next post on Auction Records.

Put on your thinking cap before shelling out your hard-earned cash for rare books.  Do your research!