Age is the wrong question
A Victorian family Bible is 150 years old and sells for £20. A paperback from 1997 sells for £1,500 if it is the first printing of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Nineteenth-century books were printed in enormous numbers and most were kept, so most are common. The questions that decide value are different, and there are four of them.
Demand
Someone has to want the book. The strongest demand is for the first printings of books that became famous: modern literature, crime and thrillers, children’s classics, science fiction, travel and exploration, and early science and natural history. Fine bindings, private press books and illustrated books have their own collectors.
The categories with almost no demand account for most of what is on an inherited shelf.
| No market | Why |
|---|---|
| Family Bibles, prayer books, hymnals | Printed in millions and kept in every house |
| Encyclopaedias and dictionaries of any age | Superseded, heavy, and nobody wants a shelf of them |
| Reader’s Digest condensed books | Not the text, and not collected |
| Book club editions | Printed for members. See the printing guide |
| Reprints of classics in decorative bindings | Sold by the yard as decoration, at decoration prices |
| School prizes, sermons, improving literature | Printed for an audience that no longer exists |
| Reader’s copies of modern paperbacks | Charity shop stock |
| Ex-library anything | Stamps, pockets and plastic jackets. A heavy discount |
A shelf of those is a charity shop run, and recognising it in ten minutes is worth more than a week of hoping.
Scarcity
Scarcity is a question with an answer rather than a feeling. The British Library catalogue records what was published and held under legal deposit, and Library Hub Discover shows how many British research libraries hold a given edition. A title in six libraries and a title in two hundred are different propositions before condition is considered at all.
First printings are scarce by definition. Beyond that, scarcity comes from small print runs, books that were read to pieces, wartime paper, and jackets that were thrown away.
A first printing of The Hobbit ran to 1,500 copies in 1937. Casino Royale ran to 4,728 in 1953. Most jackets went in the bin, which is why the jacket rather than the book is what survives in small numbers.
Condition
The trade grades in a few words, and each step is a large change in price.
| Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Fine | As new. No faults. |
| Near fine | A small fault, noted. |
| Very good | Some wear, all complete, nothing serious. |
| Good | Worn and used. Complete. |
| Fair or poor | Damaged, marked, or incomplete. |
Faults to look for: a cracked or shaken binding, foxing (brown spots on the paper), damp staining, a faded spine, a previous owner’s name or bookplate, a remainder mark on the page edges, and missing plates or maps.
What condition does, worked through
Take one book and move it down the ladder. A first printing of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Jonathan Cape, 1953, is the same text in every line below.
| Condition | Illustrative hammer |
|---|---|
| Fine in a fine, unfaded jacket | £25,000 and up |
| Near fine in a near fine jacket | £12,000 to £18,000 |
| Very good in a very good jacket, spine toned | £6,000 to £10,000 |
| Good in a worn or restored jacket | £3,000 to £5,000 |
| Very good, no jacket | £800 to £1,500 |
| Good, no jacket, owner’s name | £400 to £700 |
| Ex-library, rebound, or reading copy | £150 to £300 |
An illustrative figure in the price records puts a 1953 Casino Royale at £4,200 hammer, in the fourth row. The gap between the top of that table and the bottom is a factor of eighty, and it is the same book throughout.
The dust jacket
For books published after about 1920, the jacket is most of the value. A first printing of The Great Gatsby sells for a few thousand pounds without its jacket and for a few hundred thousand with it.
The same applies down the scale. A Fleming first without a jacket is a reading copy. With a clean jacket it is a collector’s item.
Jackets are graded separately from the book, which is why a description reads “near fine in a very good jacket”. A price-clipped jacket, where the corner carrying the price has been cut off, sells at a discount of a quarter to a third. A jacket supplied from another copy, or a facsimile, must be declared and is worth a fraction of an original.
Never throw away a torn jacket. A restored jacket beats no jacket by a wide margin.
Bindings
Most books are in publisher’s cloth, which is what they were issued in, and that is what collectors want. Two exceptions carry value in the binding itself.
Fine bindings are hand-bound in leather by a named workshop: Zaehnsdorf, Riviere, Sangorski and Sutcliffe, Bayntun. The binder’s ticket is inside the front cover or at the foot of a turn-in. A signed fine binding on an ordinary text is worth money for the binding alone.
Private press books were printed in small numbered editions on good paper: Kelmscott, Doves, Golden Cockerel, Nonesuch, Gregynog. The limitation statement gives the number, and a low number or a special copy on vellum carries a premium.
A leather binding that is not either of these is a nineteenth-century trade binding, and it is decoration.
Signatures and associations
A signature adds value in proportion to the author’s fame and how rarely they signed. An inscription to a named person is worth more than a bare signature, because it can be dated and placed.
An association copy, inscribed to someone connected with the book or with the author’s life, is worth most of all. A copy inscribed to the dedicatee, the editor, another writer in the same circle, or the person the book is about, sits in a different price bracket from a signed copy.
Forged signatures exist for every famous author, and the forgeries are good. Buy signed books only from sellers who guarantee them, and get a signed book of any value certified before selling it.
What a shelf of inherited books is worth
The honest answer, for most shelves, is the value of the two or three books on it that meet the tests above. The rest sell in boxes at auction for pounds, or go to charity, and the selling guide gives the published rate a book saleroom charges on a carton of them. Children’s annuals and Ladybird books are the commonest of those boxes, and the children’s books page gives what a quantity lot of them makes and which volumes to take out of it first.
Finding the two or three is the job. Start with the first edition guide and keep the publisher-by-publisher list beside it. Photograph the spines of every shelf before anything moves.
