[gwern]

"As much as such prices might set a gold digger's heart racing, they are not usually what motivates book collectors, whose relationship to their objects of desire is varied and complex. At a Boston fair in October, I heard a dealer with an impressive selection of dust jacket art say, "Don't judge a book by its content." However tongue-in-cheek, this twisted aphorism exposes the curious fact that many collectors don't actually read their books." https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/collecting/2008-01-18-aliso...

[0xDEADFED5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

[brazzy]

I think that's a slightly different phenomenon.

Tsundoku is mostly about buying books with the intention to read them, but then not getting around to it.

But to many book collectors, the books are mainly or purely collection items, to be found, owned, sorted and looked at, but without any intention of ever reading most of them.