Collected Books: The Guide to Identification and Values. Allen OSB Ahearn

as did books on travel and exploration, economics and finance. Children’s books included in the book did very well, although there aren’t a great number of them. Books on books have held their prices which is normal, as they haven’t shown much growth in prices over the years. In literature, prices for many of the literary authors from the last 20 or 30 years went down in value, most likely as a result of the internet revealing the abundance of copies relative to the buyers available. On the other hand, books published before 1950 held up well; and many genres, such as mysteries, detective, and science fiction have shown very good increases in values. A mixed bag, but as we all know this market is driven by supply and demand, as are most markets, and the internet has given everyone a much more accurate picture of the true supply (whereas before we were all making educated guesses).

      Please take a moment to look at the information on the endpapers. We believe this book will prove useful by providing estimated values for a selection of collected books based on the condition guidelines on the endpapers. We have based the estimates herein on prices of current copies offered for sale or prices realized at recent auctions. But many of the books have not appeared at auction for years, or on the internet, or in dealers’ catalogs. In these cases, we made estimates based on our years in the trade of buying and selling books and by consulting with the many helpful contacts we have made over the years. (See the Acknowledgement section.)

      We believe the vast majority of the information in this book is accurate, particularly the bibliographical information, which is based on the books in our reference library (see Selected Bibliography of Works Consulted for a list). We strongly encourage correspondence on errors or confusing entries. We believe the prices are representative of current retail prices, but with 20,000 or so entries it would be unlikely to get them all right. So consult other sources as well before making a final decision on buying or pricing an expensive book.

      As mentioned before, we used our own experience buying and selling, and auction, internet and catalog prices, or projections from these prices, to estimate our prices. But remember that a price guide such as this may under-price scarce or rare books, and these truly scarce titles may be priced far above our estimates when they finally appear on the market. The latter is reasonable, because the estimates on the scarce books have been based on very few or, in some cases, very old appearances at auction or in catalogs.

      Have fun and enjoy the chase. There are still a lot of good books and good people out there to meet.

      USING THIS GUIDE

      All books listed herein are first editions/first printings of the individual titles, unless otherwise stated. Each of the entries includes sufficient information to allow the reader to identify editions of the book in-hand. The prices are our best estimates for the books in the condition described below. What we have tried to do is outline how a publisher identifies their first printings (First Edition Identification By Publisher), and note exceptions. In other words, if the book you have is published by Random House and the First Edition Identification By Publisher states that Random House states “First Printing” on their books, and they didn’t on the book in-hand, the entry will say “first edition not stated” (otherwise there will be no exception noted and the book in-hand should, in this example, state “First Printing” — or it isn’t a first).

      Remember, we are not trying to tell you if a book is a $50 or $60 book, we are trying to tell you if it is closer to $50 than to $500. The more expensive it is, the more research you should do.

      The entries are composed of:

      Author, title, place of publication, date of publication, and only that additional information needed to identify the issue, the state or edition, and the value.

      All entries start with the first editions (first printings) unless otherwise stated. “Trade” is used to indicate the first general edition available for public sale after a limited edition has been issued; usually the same sheets are used for both the limited and trade editions. The later entries under the same title usually show the first U.S. or first U.K. editions, illustrated editions or other editions of some value.

      If the author’s name does not appear on the title page, the entry will start with the title. If the author used a pseudonym, the pseudonym will appear first and the entry will include the author’s name in parentheses.

      IMPORTANT NOTES:

      The section on First Edition Identification by Publisher is applicable to each entry unless otherwise stated.

      Author’s first books: There are many titles listed which state that the title is the author’s first book. In most cases, in our opinion, an author’s first book puts an upper limit on the value of his or her books. This is why the value of the first book can often be used as a rough guide to estimating the prices of later books. If a current catalog price or auction record is available, it could, of course, be more reliable. But if such records are not available and you find two books by the same author, one published in 1930 and one in 1940, the one published in 1930 will normally be valued higher, and it will be important to know whether the author’s first book was published in 1900 or 1929. This rule applies to unsigned trade editions only (often a signed and limited edition of a later book will be valued more highly than the first or earlier book). There are exceptions—for example, when a first or early book had a large printing; or when a later book is much scarcer and/or is acclaimed as an “important” book with lasting literary value; or perhaps when a popular movie has been made out of a later book.

      BAL, VAB, etc: Occasionally an entry will reference VAB (Van Allen Bradley's Handbook of Values, 1982-1983) if there were points in VAB that could not be found in any other reference work, and we thought they should not be left out. In addition, some entries include reference to specific bibliographies, such as Bibliography of American Literature (BAL), First Printings of American Authors (FPAA), Modern First Editions, by Merle Johnson (Johnson), and USiana by Wright Howes (Howes). Full titles of these and other bibliographies used to develop this guide can be found in Selected Bibliography of Works Consulted.

      Book of the Month Club (BOMC): It should be noted that most of the BOMC editions look exactly like the true first editions and may actually state "First Edition.” See Reprint Publishers and Book Clubs above. These are not first editions.

      Dates/Places: If the place of publication or date does not appear on the title page, this information will be in parentheses in the entries, e.g. (New York, 1963) would indicate that neither the place or date were on the title page but were printed in the book elsewhere, normally on the copyright page. This is particularly significant because the presence of a date on the title page may be the only way to differentiate between first and later printings. But, as we have taken the entries from many sources and in some cases have never actually handled the particular book, we may think the book has the date or place on the title page when in fact it doesn’t. Many dealers follow the convention of using the parentheses (and brackets, see below) but most do not bother.

      If the place of publication or date does not appear in the book at all, but is known by the compilers, it will appear in brackets, e.g. [1969]. If not known it might be [circa 1930] or “no-date.”

      If there is no date on the title page, check to see if the publisher is one of the reprint publishers who never put dates on their publications, but only publish reprints, and that would immediately tell you the book is not a first edition (with a few exceptions specifically noted in the entries, and certain young adult and children’s books such as Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, etc.): Blakiston, A. L. Burt, Grosset & Dunlap, Hurst, Modern Library, Sun Dial or Tower Books (World).

      Limited Editions Club (LEC): The list of titles that follows includes hundreds published by the LEC. The club was started in 1929 and published 12 titles a year. All of them, until recent years, were limited to 1500 copies and signed by the illustrators. A few were also signed by the authors. But most of our entries do not state that the books are signed by the illustrators.

      Quantities: If the entry states a quantity of copies, such as “One of 500 copies,”