In 2000 I began investing in rare books. I started by buying a magazine called The Book and Magazine Collector. It was really good fun. It was around the time that Harry Potter first edition books were becoming incredibly collectable.
I bought a number of collectable books from rare book dealers from The Book and Magazine Collector. That was a good start. And then eventually I ventured online to invest in books. First I looked on eBay - this was amazing it really helped with my book collecting terminology. I learnt terminolgy such as signed first edition, first edition first impression and so on.
And then I found book collecting sites called Abe Books or Abebooks, there was also Alibris and Biblio. These are good sites to visit for rare hard to find books.
Every valuable rare books quality and condition has an effect on it's value. Also if a first edition book has been signed this generally adds to its value. Most importantly it is a good idea to get a publication date on a book that you have in your rare book collection. Why? Well if an author is unknown then it will be more valuable to have a signature and date as close to the publication date as possible. This adds to the book collectability.
Another good idea is to have rare books that are part of a limited edition. This is because only a limited amount exist in a limited edition and generally they are officially authorised with a publisher.
Anyway that's enough from me today. I will be back soon to write another article on rare books in 2010.
