Sort the shelves before you ring anyone
Nobody is going to look at 300 books one at a time. A dealer asked to quote on a library will walk the shelves for ten minutes, pull out four or five titles, and price the rest by the carton. Where to sell old books is therefore settled before any valuer is called, by sorting the shelves into three piles yourself.
The first pile is first printings in their jackets, signed copies, illustrated and private press books, and anything on a subject with collectors behind it. Next comes clean, readable stock that sells at a few pounds a copy: local history, military history, natural history, cookery, art reference. Everything left over is what the value guide lists as having no market, and on most shelves it is the bulk of what is on them.
Children’s annuals and Ladybird books go as quantity lots rather than singly, and what children’s books and annuals sell for gives the figures a box of them makes.
Each pile has one buyer, and sending the wrong pile to the wrong buyer is what costs money.
| Pile | Where it goes | How the money arrives |
|---|---|---|
| First printings, signed, private press | A specialist book saleroom, lotted singly | Hammer, less the charges below, settled after the sale |
| Saleable general stock | A book dealer buying the shelf, or a general saleroom as box lots | One offer for the whole shelf, in cleared funds on the day, or hammer on a box lot |
| No market | Charity, a house clearance firm, or paper recycling | Nothing. The value is the space |
The rates a book saleroom publishes
Dominic Winter, which holds regular book, map and manuscript sales, publishes its vendor terms in full, and they show how differently a book house charges for a single volume and for a carton of them.
| Charge | Dominic Winter’s published rate |
|---|---|
| Commission on an ordinary lot | 16.5 per cent, inclusive of loss and damage cover, subject to a minimum of £15 per lot |
| Commission on a bulk lot | 21.5 per cent, inclusive of cover, subject to a minimum of £20 per lot. Bulk means the cartons and quantity section, plus runs of periodicals and magazines |
| Unsold lot | £5 per lot |
| Illustration in the catalogue and on the website | 5 per cent of the hammer price, to a maximum of £25 plus VAT per illustration, and nothing on an unsold lot |
| Settlement | 30 days after the day of the auction, once the buyer has paid |
The two commission rates are the arithmetic behind the sorting. A carton of general stock carries the higher rate and a £20 floor, so a box that makes £25 at hammer returns about £5 to the seller. Lots are sold without reserve unless a reserve is agreed, and where one is agreed the auctioneer bids for the vendor to reach it.
Books escape the VAT on a saleroom’s commission
Printed books are zero rated, and that reaches the saleroom’s commission as well as the book itself. HMRC’s guidance on the auctioneers’ VAT margin scheme states that where an auctioneer sells zero-rated goods, antique books being the example it gives, the margin is zero rated too and the auctioneer enters nil for the VAT due. Dominic Winter’s terms apply that to the seller’s side: zero-rated items, printed books and unframed maps among them, carry no VAT on the vendor commission or on the unsold charge.
A seller consigning silver or medals pays commission plus VAT on it, as the medals page sets out at two houses. On books the commission carries no VAT, which on a 16.5 per cent rate is worth 3.3 per cent of the hammer. The relief stops at the commission and the unsold charge: an illustration is quoted plus VAT and carries it, and the whole advantage reverses the moment a framed map or a piece of militaria goes in with the books.
What a famous name actually nets
Take the six volumes of Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, all first editions, in the price records at £260 hammer against an estimate of £200 to £300. That row is an illustrative figure rather than a particular sale, and it is the honest case for an inherited shelf: a household name, six first editions, and a result in the low hundreds. What separates a set at this level from one worth many times more is the jackets and the condition, which the value guide above works through grade by grade.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hammer, as one lot | £260 |
| Commission at 16.5 per cent | £42.90 deducted |
| VAT on the commission | None, the books being zero rated |
| One catalogue illustration at 5 per cent | £13 deducted |
| VAT on the illustration charge | £2.60 deducted |
| Received by the seller | £201.50 |
Run the same £260 as four cartons of general stock instead. At £65 a carton, 21.5 per cent comes to just under £14, so the £20 floor replaces it on each one and the commission is £80 rather than £55.90. The lotting decision moves more money on a modest consignment than the choice of house does.
The clause that disposes of what will not sell
A book house reserves the right to throw part of the consignment away, and it says so in writing. Dominic Winter’s selling terms put it plainly:
In the case of miscellaneous books, the Auctioneer reserves the right to extract and dispose of books that, in the opinion of the Auctioneer at his absolute discretion, have no saleable value …
The omitted words give the reason: the effect such books have on the saleability of the rest of the lot. Read it before boxing up the third pile and sending it along with the first two. Those books are not coming back, and the executor who wanted them to go to a named charity has given the decision away. Sort the no-market pile out at the house, where it costs nothing to put a box aside.
The two checks before anything is boxed
Open the jacket flap on every book in the first pile and look at the corner that carries the price. A clipped jacket sells at a discount, an unclipped one does not, and a jacket parted from its book in a box is worth little to either. Then check the copyright page against the publisher-by-publisher guide, because a saleroom catalogues what it is told and a first printing described as a reprint sells as one.
Photograph the spines of each shelf as it stands and send the photographs to two book houses before a single carton is packed. The houses that hold regular book sales in Britain are few, Dominic Winter and Forum Auctions among them, and each will say which books it would catalogue singly and which it would put in the cartons section. That answer is the valuation, and the books section holds the identification guides to read while waiting for it.
