On Collecting Many people with the collecting bug collect more than just one thing. If you feel that your collecting habit might be more like a genetically inherited trait rather than a simple hobby, then you probably cannot stop at collecting books. For me, books have been a major interest my whole adult life. But [...]
Value Versus Rarity People’s perception of what is valuable often has more impact on price than actual rarity. The dictionary definition of rare, in the case of collecting, is “not found in large numbers and, therefore, of interest and value.” In other words, the less of something, the more rare. So, it interests me no [...]
Hello and welcome to this book is collectible, a website for book collectors; more specifically for collectors of modern fictional literature. There will be an emphasis on signed first editions, Canadian literature, and gay literature, but you can expect to see a wide range of collectible books here. Because there are as many different collections [...]
Other Collections I wonder how many book collectors collect other things. Personally, I have collected books all my life, but I have also had many other ‘phases’ that I have gone through. There was the toaster phase. Check out my two favourites: the 1940 Toast-o-lator on the left and the 1960 Sunbeam down on the [...]
Rating Internet Book Sellers Of all the internet book websites I have used, AbeBooks is the only one I have found that provides seller ratings. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in a previous post, AbeBooks’ ratings are based solely on the percentage of completed sales — a pretty limited system for deciding a seller’s overall reliability. [...]
On Grading a Book’s Condition With the advent of internet shopping it has become necessary to adopt a specific and standardized method of grading the condition of books for sale. Any of you who have bought collectible books on-line will have seen the system of letter grades for the books themselves and then for their [...]
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger Little, Brown and Company, U.S.A. 1991 I want to juxtapose a collectible book and a reading copy, so here is my often re-read, 44th (note the 44 on the number line) printing of the 1991 Little, Brown and Company mass market paperback edition of The Catcher in the Rye; the same [...]