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“I f you buy a table, you’d want it to have four legs,” says David Goldthorpe, Sotheby’s European Head of Books and Manuscripts Department. It’s the same with editions. For collectors, it’s important to make sure a book doesn’t just have every page of text included but also any illustrations, drawings, inserts or other aspects that were originally there. Of course, this isn’t always easy to come by. “When a book is complete, collectors call it a ‘perfect copy,’ telling you how rare that is,” Goldthorpe says.
Shakespeare’s famous First Folio, printed in 1623, was the first collected book of his works. Of the 36 plays included, half had never been printed before. Fewer than 750 copies were printed – making them the sole copies of some of his now-most-famous works.
The book’s age, as well as the fact that it was well-read, means that when copies come up for sale they’re often incomplete or include pages in facsimile – referring to newer replacements done in the style of the original. Goldthorpe noted that the original First Folio has a title page with an engraving of Shakespeare, which is often missing because people used to take it out. “Copies of that book are almost always missing something or another, so often it comes down to whether the text of the plays is all there,” Goldthorpe says.
A First Folio that had been in private hands for 399 years sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2022 for $2.5 million, despite having a few pages in facsimile. The rarity and fame of the book mean that as long as the book is relatively complete, it will still be quite valuable.
In some cases, a missing illustration might halve the value of a book immediately, Goldthorpe says, as in the case of The Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in 1493. The book is full of woodcuts showing various European locations as well as a particularly striking world map that was often removed to be viewed or sold. The map can be worth over $7,000 on its own, Goldthorpe says. “If someone comes to me with a copy of that book, I first check to see if the world map is there.”
Other times a missing page might only result in a small decrease in the book’s value. Jane Austen’s novels, Goldthorpe says, often had a half-title page. This page, still included in many contemporary books, was designed to prevent damage to the main title page during binding. “When the books got bound, the half-titles were often thrown away,” Goldthorpe says. A Jane Austen first edition without it is not technically a perfect copy, but is quite desirable nonetheless.
“If someone comes to me with a copy of ‘The Nuremberg Chronicle,’ I first check to see if the world map is there.”
Every book was assembled with its own set of unique features upon publication. To confirm the completeness of a book, experts have to “collate” it. “That can involve turning every page in the book,” Goldthorpe says, as well as consulting other texts to ascertain whether a certain edition of a book needs to have things like illustrations or half-titles.
The older a book is, the harder it can be to find a complete copy. “A lot of books printed before 1500 can have problems with completeness,” Goldthorpe says. Even without people taking out half-titles or illustrations for various reasons, basic wear and tear can loosen pages over time. This is common in old cookbooks, which were heavily used. More recently, in the early days of dust jackets, readers often threw them away after purchase.
Interestingly there are accepted ways to make books complete again. Sometimes people take two incomplete copies of the same edition and marry them together until at least one of the books now has every page it’s supposed to. The seller just has to be honest about any alternations made to the book.
Bibliophiles want a book that feels complete in their collection, but there can be a wider range between a perfect copy and an imperfect yet still whole-feeling object. Ultimately, it’s not how many pages are missing that matters, but which specific pages and how important they are to that text that determines value.
