Rare Books Fine Press Limited Editions
Posted by Richard Gabriel on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 04:17 PM
In 1932 there was a nifty little publication produced by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company from Chicago, Illinois. The title of the book is: "You are Invited to View an Exhibition of Finely-Printed Books Since William Morris, of Which this is the Catalogue, at the Lakeside Press Galleries, September, October and November, 1932. Nine to Five, Week-Days." R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company 350 East Twenty-Second Street, Chicago, Illinois. There are 150 rare books listed in this little publication from the presses of 55 companies that were selected during the year as the best books available (for 1930). The most note worthy or the rare book houses represented are Kelmscott Press, Golden Cockerel Press, Ashendene Press, Grabhorn Press, John Nash, Nonesuch Press, Riverside Press, D. B. Updike and many others. The selection is not complete but in the authors view, the ones that are most acceptable to their tastes and that reflect different aspects of the book making business.
We ran through the list of books and found many of them available on the web and through the data bases for Advanced Book Exchange, and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers and priced them at the highest price shown and multiplied that number times the number of books that we searched so far. Their average price over the 55 books that we catalogued so far is a whooping $4,083 per book. We went back and looked at the some of the publication prices and they averaged about $50+ per book and since 1930 that represents a gain of nearly 102% per year over the 80 years. Astounding returns, however that gain should be taken with a huge block of salt, forget the grains. Probably for many years some of these book prices sat flat or actually may have fallen and some of the publishers listed in our little book, have gained less than 1% per year. A large part of the gains are from what we would call the heavy hitters, Kelmscott being one of the heaviest swingers, knocking estimates right out of the park. Why, William Morris…name sound familiar? If not, look him up.
So what’s the message? The message is buy quality, craftsmanship and books from small run numbers for their publications and of course, pristine protection of the asset. You can begin building your collection today but buying Nash, Cockerel, Ashedene and Grabhorn and fill in the collection with modern limited edition runs of the highest quality. If you run across one of these antiquarian books in your attic or your grandfather’s library and you are not sure, call us, email us, write us and don’t put it into a garage sale or just sell it. You might be sitting on a book worth quite a bit of money!