The Collectible Book Blog

One of the most exciting things about book collecting is that you never know where and when that rare book will turn up.
 
Here is a true story of one of our better rare book finds.  This took place in the summer of 2006.  At the time I was doing some route sales for a friend [...]

What is a collectible book worth?  How rare is it?  Who else has a copy, and how many are known?  These are important questions for today’s book collector.  They are especially important for the eBay bidder.  The only way to answer these questions is through research.
 
Our previous “how-to” research posts in the series of Buying [...]

By S. P. Wurth.

One of the key elements in book research is to try to determine just how scarce an item is.  People collect books for many reasons, but one of the main ones is to acquire a book that is uncommon, scarce, or rare.
 
We often start out by examining book dealer catalog holdings, and [...]

By S. P. Wurth

I don’t know about you, but I have more important things to do than to wait for each rare book that I am interested in to close on eBay.  Don’t get me wrong – I love collectible books and buy thousands of them every year.  Many are purchased on eBay.  Most days [...]

 
It’s tough doing business on eBay these days.  Especially when your $10,000 sale goes south.
 
Edward Marshall sold a book that had been in his inventory since 1999, only to have it taken by the State Police in Pennsylvania when they showed up to pick up the merchandise.  Here’s hoping he has now put them on [...]

A frequent item in the top ten goals for individuals is to “read more books.” 
 
(Did you know that in our Internet age there are several sites where people post, for the entire watching world, their personal goals?).
 
Such a goal, in the estimation of your humble blogger, is a worthy one.
 
But where to find the [...]

 
Do you remember a few years ago when someone found a first printing of the Declaration of Independence hidden behind a painting?  In 1989 the flea market purchase of a painting for $4 resulted in financial bliss for the new owner.  As he was inspecting it, the frame fell apart and regurgitated a first printing [...]

Solve the problem of long-term book preservation and you will warm the cockles of the heart of many an archivist.  One method gaining ground is scanned digitization.  A pilot program is being launched by “PALINET, an organization of hundreds of libraries, information centers, museums and archives that promotes library cooperation and resource sharing. It is [...]

 
Alcohol, long considered the social lubricant of the masses, and key to successful adventures in dating, has been embraced by a book collecting club in Brussels. 
“The club was formed by a handful of book lovers six years ago. Today there are around 350 members and a new, bigger venue above The Duke, a pub [...]

You can’t sell that!
 
Collectible books gathering dust in a library in Wales are the focus of controversy and the naysayers are “claiming victory in the first battle of the war over the historic texts.”  The public libraries of Cardiff have some rather scarce items in their holdings, including a Tyndale Bible, early editions of Shakespeare, [...]