Much knowledge is required by those who wish to buy with success at sales. Books vary greatly in price at different periods, and it is a mistake to suppose, from the high prices realized at celebrated sales, which are quoted in all the papers, that books are constantly advancing in price. Although many have gone up, many others have gone down, and at no time probably were good and useful books to be bought so cheap as now. If we look at old sale catalogues we shall find early printed books, specimens of old English poetry and the drama, fetching merely a fraction of what would have to be given for them now; but, on the other hand, we shall find pounds then given for standard books which would not now realize the same number of shillings; this is specially the case with classics.
The following passage from Hearne's Diaries on the fluctuations in prices is of interest in this connection:—"The editions of Classicks of the first print (commonly called editones principes) that used to go at prodigious prices are now strangely lowered; occasioned in good measure by Mr. Thomas Rawlinson, my friend, being forced to sell many of his books, in whose auction these books went cheap, tho' English history and antiquities went dear: and yet this gentleman was the chief man that raised many curious and classical books so high, by his generous and courageous way of bidding."[14]
These first editions, however, realize large prices at the present time, as has been seen at the sale of the Sunderland Library. It is experience only that will give the necessary knowledge to the book buyer, and no rules laid down in books can be of any real practical value in this case. Persons who know nothing of books are too apt to suppose that what they are inclined to consider exorbitant prices are matters of caprice, but this is not so. There is generally a very good reason for the high price.
We must remember that year by year old and curious books become scarcer, and the number of libraries where they are locked up increase; thus while the demand is greater, the supply diminishes, and the price naturally becomes higher. A unique first edition of a great author is surely a possession to be proud of, and it is no ignoble ambition to wish to obtain it.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Libraries and Founders of Libraries, 1864, p. 404.
[14] Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, 1869, vol. ii. p. 158.