[Jun8]

One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.)

My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set of Scribner's Sun Rise Edition for $10 apiece: https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Sun-Rise-Edition-6-Vo....

[ddrmaxgt37]

The closest I have come is a copy of a museum exhibition catalog about Dieter Rams from 1981 that is signed by him. I bought it online. The copy was described as having a scribble on the front page and priced very low as a consequence. Years after, I saw Dieter’s signature somewhere and realized that my book was signed.

[the-mitr]

I got a copy of a David Attenborough signed book in a similar way. It was a used book about wild flowers with an introduction by Attenborough bought very cheap about 100 INR in a used book store in Mumbai. Only later while looking at the book I realised it was an autographed copy.

[aaronbrethorst]

I found a Canon 50mm ƒ/0.95 lens at an estate sale once. Not cheap by any means, but it was a delight to play around with, and then I sold it to KEH for a profit once I was done with it. https://bluemooncameracodex.com/technical-reviews/living-wit...

[fbdab103]

How do you identify a valuable book? Are there some 1000 well known valuable items you keep in mind? Or are you looking inside every jacket hoping to find an author's signature on a 1st edition? I assume the price of a false positive is low (ie I'll buy these dusty books for $20), but sounds like a lot of legwork.

I imagine it is definitively less sexy than the Ninth Gate

[throwup238]

It depends on what you’re collecting but for pre-ISBN books, AbeBooks is the central marketplace for rare books so that’s one place to look up titles but most book collectors specialize, often in a very specific niches like certain authors or topics, usually restricted to a single era.

The hard part is tracking editions and verifying that you have a genuine first edition. Collectors depend on bibliographies which are themselves rare books that describe all the publications of a specific publisher or author and how to identify editions. Often there are marks but for valuable books it usually requires knowing the exact typos and changes between editions to authenticate them. There are a lot of counterfeits, both modern and contemporary to the original printing.

The other problem is that the vast majority of books are worthless unless they’re in very good condition. Not “good condition for their age” but damn near pristine, even if it’s hundreds of years old. If it’s falling apart, it’s almost certainly worthless, unless it’s an honest to god manuscript.

It’s mostly dependent on luck. It’s really hard to make a living with book collecting unless you’re running an auction house. Most companies handling estate sales are smart enough to check AbeBooks so the lucky life changing finds are getting rarer and rarer.

[bombcar]

A family friend lived his entire life as a bookhound, and the bread-and-butter was not first editions worth thousands, but books for fifty cents that were worth $20. Buy for a half a buck, sell to a bookstore for $5.

The key now is being able to handle the non-isbn books because everyone is out there with phone scanners now.

[fbdab103]

How much inventory did this person maintain? I assume such a business only works if you keep a warehouse of material until you can find a buyer.

[greenie_beans]

i wouldn't rely on only abebooks for price comparisons. bookfinder.com crawls more sites so you can get a better picture of the broader marketplace for a specific title.

[huytersd]

A first edition from any reasonably well known author from 50 years ago or before is automatically pretty valuable as a basic rule of thumb. Especially if it’s the authors first or second book.

[greenie_beans]

be careful going down the rabbit hole. rare books are very slow to move (aka inventory risk). you'll be stuck trying to sell the same books for years, sometimes decades. if you have something valuable and don't sell it, then your estate will only be able to sell it for a fraction of the market price. i would only recommend it if you are enthusiastic about books.

[dhosek]

My big find was a fair-condition copy of Graham Greene’s retracted second novel in a secondhand bookstore in Canada for CDN20. It’s not in collectable condition, by any means. The spine is angled and the dust jacket is missing, but just the opportunity to read this (not that good, to be honest) book and the delight of finding a copy that I could afford were a joy for me.

[OJFord]

Do you think it was mispriced then, even given its condition, or did they know exactly what they had? Just wondering if you mean it was a steal, or that the price was right but still rare to find?

[dhosek]

I think it was mispriced, but not necessarily by a lot. I bought an ex-library copy of Greene’s withdrawn third novel a couple years ago (rebound as was a common practice with library books in the first part of the twentieth century) for $300 so I’d guess that the book should have been at least $100 back then (collectable editions of the book typically sell in the thousands).