Seven Things That Set Your Number

The short answer. "What is it worth" is the wrong question at the sale table. The right one is whether handing over the marked price is a good idea, and that turns on seven things — the same seven a dealer who has been at this thirty years weighs without writing them down. Knowing them is most of the skill.

They are not exotic. Several are public. What is hard is how they are weighed against each other, and against your costs and your patience, which is why two confident opinions on the same copy so often disagree.

The seven

What dealers are asking. Read from the open market, not a price guide. A guide tells you what a copy fetched once; the asks tell you what you are selling against next week.

How long this kind of book takes to sell. A year on the shelf costs you money — the capital, the space, the photographs, the relisting. A slow title at a fair price is a worse buy than a fast one at a slightly high one.

How much dealers disagree. When the asks run from $40 to $400 for what is apparently the same book, nobody knows what it is worth — dealers included. Wide disagreement is a reason to pay less, not a chance to pick the high number.

Whether you have sold one before. Your own sale outranks every other signal. It is the one price that was actually paid, to you, for a copy you described.

How certain you are of the printing. A true first and a book-club copy are different books at different prices, and until the printing is confirmed the doubt has to be priced in. This is the one worked through below.

How many copies exist anywhere. Three on offer is a market; thirty is a commodity; none is either a rarity or a book nobody wants, and you have to know which.

The return you are aiming for. Yours to set, and every price on every trip follows from it. A dealer who needs to double their money and one who is happy with a third more will walk away from the same shelf with different books, and both can be right.

One factor, worked through

A stated first, three copies on offer, dealers asking about $300.

If the printing is confirmed — the points checked against the copy in your hands — the most you should pay is about $55. Unconfirmed, it is about $35. Somewhere in the middle, with the copy looking right but a point still open, $45.

Confirming the printing with the book open is worth $20 on this copy. That is one factor of seven, and it is the one you can move standing at the table: the copyright page, the number line, the points of issue, the book-club tells. The other six you mostly cannot change; this one you can settle in a minute, and it moves the number more than most people expect.

What this guide does not tell you

How much each of the seven counts. That weighting is the part built and corrected against real trips and real sales, and it is the part that makes a number rather than an opinion. This page gives you the list; the list is what to think about, not how to add it up.