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The Fine Line Between Rarity and Value in the Book Market
Lots of books are rare but not intrinsically valuable. However, a book that’s already valuable can become even more so if a particular edition or printing is exceptionally scarce.
“A sk 10 different book collectors and dealers what a ‘rare book’ is, and you’ll get 10 slightly different answers,” says Richard Austin, Global Head of Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts Department. The Library of Congress defines a rare book as something printed before 1801 with the advent of modern printing technology. But what about a book printed in the 1920s that’s only sometimes found with a pristine dust jacket, like The Great Gatsby? Is a first-edition hardcover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which only had a print run of 500 copies, rare? Both are certainly valuable and desirable.
“It might mean that a copy is available at Harvard or the British Library but rarely comes up for sale,” Austin says. “It could mean the book is rare to find signed.” Some books from the 18th century, such as ecclesiastical works, are relatively common and not as desirable as they once were.
“From where I sit on the commercial side, if I want to say something is truly rare I mean you only have a chance of seeing it at auction once in a generation,” Austin explains. “There are plenty of books that are desired and have great value in the collectible book market but aren’t rare.”
“People often erroneously equate age with desirability and rarity,” Austin continues. A self-published book from 1790 might be old and it might be rare, but unless the author is famous or otherwise notable, few people outside of the author’s family would desire the book. “You have to have a marriage between desirability and rarity to create value.”
This can be hard to predict, which is why book collectors often care more about their own emotional attachment to their collections than what their books will be worth someday.
Although it seems like book collecting shouldn’t be subject to the whims of fashion, subjects fall in and out of importance all the time. Religious books like psalm books or interpretations of the bible used to be popular. “In the 19th and early 20th century, clergymen might have had collections of them, but there’s not much of a market for them any longer,” Austin says.
“People often erroneously equate age with desirability and rarity.”
- Richard Austin, Global Head, Books and Manuscripts
Nobel Prize-winning author and playwright John Galsworthy was heavily collected in the 20th century, but has since fallen off the collecting path. People are still collecting F. Scott Fitzgerald and Earnest Hemingway, but are less interested in William Faulkner and John Steinbeck than they used to be. “Sometimes that’s a result of what people are continuing to read for amusement,” Austin says, noting that reading habits and larger cultural influences do impact this market. Yet that might be a bonus for devoted collectors of Faulkner, who can now complete their collections with less competition.
Other books become more desirable over time as the value of the ideas they contain grows. In the 1960s, it was possible to get a copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species fairly cheaply, Austin says. As progress was made in the sciences of evolution and genetics, it brought more attention to Darwin’s 1859 theories. Having a copy of it in your collection now means something different than it did a hundred years ago, when much of what Darwin wrote about natural selection remained unproven. It’s still possible to find a copy of the book, which had a fairly large printing, but finding a first-edition copy in fine collector’s condition is quite a bit harder. “It’s a fat little book, the cloth gets worn and the hinges crack,” Austin says.
So is The Origin of Species desirable? Yes. Is it a rare book? Sometimes!
Jane Austen’s works have been collected and appreciated for generations, but the value of her books has similarly grown over time. “Greater recognition of women authors – with Austen at the forefront – seen interest in her work increase generally,” Austin says. Film adaptations and new readers have added to the desirability of early editions of her work. It’s easy to see why collectors would value having a copy of Sense and Sensibility, her first novel, which was published in 1811 with the title page saying only that it was written “by a lady.” Less than 1,000 copies were printed and sold out within two years. In 2023, a first edition in publisher’s boards sold for over $241,000, over double the original estimate.
While a book’s rareness is a somewhat logical combination of all of its traits – the quality of its condition, whether it’s complete, if someone important owned it and so on – desirability truly is in the eye of a beholder. That’s ultimately the joy of collecting books. Each collection has its own personality and charms, whether it’s someone who has valued rare first editions by important authors or books that were bound with great artistry or even collected pristine hardcovers of more contemporary books, taking a chance on who they think literature’s greats will be 100 years from now.
