Trends in Modern Book Collecting

This recycling of books from collection to collection, often passing through dealers' hands for a very short time, sustained the trade in the most desirable books as long as the prices continued to rise to bring more copies into the marketplace to keep up with demand. However, even at the most exalted (some would say, ridiculous) prices, the demand for high spots has outstripped the supply, with the result that a new practice has filtered into the marketplace that was virtually unheard of previously with modern books -- that of offering first editions in repaired, or more properly, "restored" dust jackets. When Catcher in the Rye sold for $400, a $200 repair on a tattered dust jacket could hardly be justified. But when the book sells for $6000 and the repair is still $200, or even $400, it's a lot easier to justify the cost. And the collecting community seems to have reached a consensus that, if the choice is between attractiveness and original condition, the former will win out almost every time. Now virtually all of the copies of, say, The Great Gatsby that have shown up on the market in recent years have had restored jackets -- some of them created from fragments. Many copies of Catcher in the Rye, which appear beautiful at first glance, show the hand of the restorer on closer inspection, as do most copies of To Kill a Mockingbird that do not appear tattered and worn. Since the practice has been, in effect, sanctioned by the collecting community -- the notable auction of Richard Manney's books helped confirm that a few years ago -- this is not typically viewed as an ethical dilemma, but rather as just another consideration one should factor in when deciding on a purchase. Personally, I'm not so sure. A few years ago, there was a minor uproar at an ABAA book fair when a dealer was seen offering first editions with dust jackets that were color photocopies of the original dust jacket. The books were clearly identified as such by the dealer and the prices were very modest compared to a first edition in an original jacket but there was still a fairly general consensus that this was not appropriate. Yet, when a dust jacket of a high spot can be "restored" to apparently pristine condition from a fragmentary original, it begs the question of what exactly is the difference? How much of the original paper of the dust jacket must be present for a copy to be deemed acceptable? At the extremes it's easy to know the answer, but knowing where exactly to draw the line in the middle is the problem. Would one square inch of an original jacket be enough to justify an entirely recontructed -- i.e., created -- jacket as being acceptable? Two square inches? Ten? And so on. My sense is that the market is currently quite immature in this regard. These questions haven't been before us for long enough or in large enough numbers for the answers we're positing to be reliable -- that is, well-considered and thought through with sufficient understanding. It wouldn't surprise me to see a change in how this is viewed in coming years. What I hope doesn't happen is what may be most likely to happen -- a backlash against all restoration or, alternatively, a mindless acquiescence to the notion that anything that can be gotten away with is acceptable.

At the very least, it's something that we booksellers should take it upon ourselves to inform our customers about. There's nothing wrong with selling a restored Gatsby or Catcher, at least in today's market. There is something wrong with hiding the restoration from one's customer. And what tends to happen is that the restored copies creep up in price until they are even with, or just below, the price of comparably attractive unrestored copies. And then those unrestored copies, which continue to get progressively scarcer, take another leap in price -- which sometimes can initiate another round of collected books coming into the market, the supply catching up with demand temporarily, and price escalating yet again, either as demand continues to outstrip supply or, occasionally, as the new copies coming into the market raise the standard of condition compared to those already being offered for sale.

All of this helps explain, in part, the rise in the prices of high spot first editions. It's more complicated -- and less consciously driven -- than is sometimes assumed, or than the easy stereotypes that are used to characterize the market suggest. There is, no doubt, a germ of truth in the notion that collectors tend to collect what they read in high school -- or at least the books that influenced them at an impressionable age. But it is also true that, as time has passed, many of these works that are highly collected today have withstood the test of time in a way that they hadn't a generation ago. Part of the rise in the prices of high spots simply reflects the books' having lasted long enough to become, in effect, part of the canon. That collectors now reaching maturity may have read some of these books in high school is less important than the fact that they are still around, and still read, 30 and 40 years later. That they are here now is as important as their having been there then, or more so.

Still, collecting high spots can be a fairly mindless practice, just as collecting based on any list can be. Collecting Pulitzer Prizes or National Book Award winners, or Granta 20 authors, or Modern Library Top 100 books or, outside of the realm of modern literature, Printing and the Mind of Man titles can be a slavish adherence to the received wisdom of others. But lists are guides, and most collectors I know use them as such. In collecting Pulitzers, for example -- many of which, by the way, are not "high spots" -- many people adopt the completists' approach, attempting to fill out the list in its entirety. Sometimes the collections develop offshoots or branches: collecting The Grapes of Wrath as part of a Pulitzer collection may lead to collecting other Steinbeck first editions, or maybe just other Steinbeck novels. The collections tend to take on something of a life of their own, guided by the collector's inclinations and interests, not by received wisdom. For every high spot collector I've met who struck me as "shallow" and uninterested in the books per se, there are many more who strike me as serious and avid lovers of literature, who are attempting to put together a collection of great literature, and trying to do so in a way that best assures that the money they spend on their passion will be in some measure recoverable at a later date, oftentimes not for themselves but rather for their children or heirs. In short, they are trying to collect books out of love, but they also want to do so in a responsible way and are looking at the "bottom line" not so much out of greed as out of a seriousness of purpose: this book collection, like the other elements of their life, should be something that is not, finally, a mere indulgence.

In that light it makes sense that, as certain books become more and more established as milestones of our culture, more and more collectors will want them. And with an ever-diminishing supply, the upward pressure on prices will be very great. In a very real sense, the most proper answer to the question I was repeatedly being asked -- "Why is this book that I want so expensive?" -- should have been "Because you, like hundreds of other people, want it." That, of course, raises the question of whether these books are good investments or, more importantly, good "values?" "If I buy these books now, will I stand a reasonable chance of getting most or all of my money back, or even making a profit, if I decide to sell them later?"

Here the usual disclaimer -- the one your stock broker or mutual fund gives out, most often in very small print -- is in order. Something to the effect of "past performance is no guarantee of future results." Then they go on to show you how, if you had invested $5000 with them 20 years ago, you'd be worth a million dollars today. I can pull the statistics out to show you that values of collectible books, over the last 50 or 60 years, have tended to increase at double the rate of inflation so that, yes, in general over the long haul, you'll do okay collecting books. Still, the rate of increase in the prices of high spots over the last 5 or 10 years is much more akin to the bull market that went on for most of the 1990s: many stocks and mutual funds were appreciating at 30% per year and, no, that won't tend to continue, in that market or in the rare book market. Over time, the stock market will tend to average out at 10-12% return; rare books will probably come out at their historical averages of about 7%. And, if you bought Netscape at the top of its market, yes, you could take a bath if Microsoft succeeds in squashing it. Similarly, if the critical consensus on On the Road takes a turn in the direction of viewing it as a quaint artifact of a particular historical time period, its value as a collectible may stagnate or even drop. Some John Galsworthy limited editions sold for more in 1930, when a dollar was worth a great deal more than it is today, than they would bring now -- in other words, they will have lost most of their value over time. One thing that is, if not certain, then extremely likely: just as we're not likely to see 30% returns in the stock market again for some time, we're not going to see high spots doubling in price every two years indefinitely either. The maxim that one should plan on holding onto books for 5 or 10 years if one is going to realize a profit is probably especially true for books bought during the recent period of dramatically increasing prices for high spots.

That is not to say, however, that they don't represent, in more than one way, a "good investment." If a signed On the Road is being offered at $35,000, does this represent a market gone awry, with no connection to reality whatsoever? Is there any sense in which the "value" of this book could conceivably be construed to approximate such a number?

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Copyright © 1999 by Ken Lopez