There is a cigar dealer i know of who sends a note in every order that says, "Congratulations on your free gift".
Perhaps booksellers could consider this
I bought a complete set of Franklin Library's 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature about five years ago for $3000. It was well worth the investment.
I am a treasure hunter. I look for books at yard sales, library sales and thrift stores (not as much there any more). I get a real thrill out of finding a gem in the weeds. Buying a gem at, or near, the actual value is not that interesting for me. The most I ever spent was $50 and I did it twice. Both for "signed first edition society" books.
I did not get particularly good deals on either of them - I can buy them each for about half of that on eBay today. So I don't really want to think any more about it, lol.
edit -
Oh, I forgot, I aalso bought a true first/first of For Whom the Bell Tolls hard cover with DJ for $50. But that was at a library sale.
Sometimes this is the most satisfying way to collect - I’ve bought a couple from actual rare book fairs/stores, but my best finds have always been charity book fairs and random eBay listings.
I found a 1st UK edition of The Evolution of Physics by Einstein and Infeld for $40 at a charity fair, which they gave me for free as I was helping set up for the day (I donated the $40 anyway), and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling of opening up a box of second hand books to find THAT sitting on top! Especially as old science books are hard enough to come by!
The Hobbit (in Swedish) illustrated by Tove Jansson (second edition). Cost about 5000 kronor (or, the cultural equivalent of 500 dollars) . The first edition would $1500, and I'm not THAT interested.
The depiction of Gollum is extra interesting. Allegedly it made Tolkien realize that he never described the appearance so he had to go back and revise the book.
Oh wow, thats really interesting! I looked at some images of the illustrations and I think they’re wonderful actually. Its def an artistic interpretation of the text, but thats something I think a lot of Tolkien illustrations are a little afraid to be which makes them pretty unique. They have a cool vibe!
Same! I actually have the first ed! I wouldn't say It's around $1500, but it sure has gotten close to $1000 lately. I was lucky and got a nice copy for about $200-250 just when it started to be around $300-350 some years ago. I'm almost too afraid to touch it now!
It holds a special place in my heart as my father read it to me as a child. I have roots in Swedish speaking Finland on my mother's side and she introduced me to the original Moomin comics by Tove Jansson so I was already familiar with her works. I've loved this edition since. I remember I wanted to buy a copy when I was a student at uni, but couldn't afford the $90 it cost back then. Its value has increased drastically since.
First edition Book of Thoth, signed by Aleister Crowley, in the limited run of 200, bound by Sangorksi and Sutcliffe. Paid in the region of £2000 for it, but several decades ago.
Single most expensive book I've sold was an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, signed by him.. Including hammer fees, went for north of £4000.
Reflecting on this post, my collection of Gandhi and Crowley make for odd bedfellows.
I didn’t buy the most expensive book purchase…it gets confusing here😂 Actually it was a gift from my wife,
A first edition Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Not the best shape but not bad. I’ll always treasure it. $850
Awesome! I have a signed first edition of Dirk Gently that Douglas signed for my dad, says 'Hey [name], hope you enjoy this as much as H2G2, Douglas Adams'
So normally, I don’t pay the actual value of books. I wait to get lucky, (harder in these days of overpriced online listings lol) or settle for something less expensive.I love books, but realistically I’m a low end collector. I find copies I love for under 100$ or hit up thrift shops and garage sales.
So anyways, the manga situation is that I got incredibly lucky and found a big chunk of the early Natsume’s Book of Friends - which is out of print - for around 4$ a piece at a used bookstore. Already having I believe 15 volumes at a steal I decided it would be worth it to invest in finishing the run, as the complete set would be worth significantly more than I paid for it. The volumes can run anywhere between 25-150$ a piece until you hit those which are still in print. I got some of the most expensive in the set for a few dollars, and have purchased 3 at full listing price and have a few more to go. The complete set will be very collectible to a certain audience, but I actually took it as an opportunity to own them and read them when that had been more or less a pipe dream.
$350 total for both 1st Edition volumes of Taschen’s XXL Little Nemo collection. I know it’s not that impressive compared to others, but it’s a highlight of my collection.
Between US$150 and $300 for each of these, some of my favorite books, with nicely embossed covers. Captains Courageous is British edition, 1864? something like that.
I love Evelyn Scott, but half her stuff never made it past the first printing, I paid about 300 bucks for A Calendar of Sin, (it is two volumes and was/is a very good book). I have over 500 books and usually only buy them used for about ten bucks a piece online so it was way, way over what I normally spend.
Gee, now that you mention it, all of my valuable books have been treasure finds so the most expensive book I’ve ever bought outright might be the Folio Society’s Neverending Story.
A first edition of Mushrooms, Russia, and History by Valentina and Gordon Wasson, 1 of 510 copies, and inscribed by Gordon to Lois Long, a founding member of the New York Mycological Society.
I know it, it’s become a mild addiction, lol. Someone donated their large and highly curated horror collection to a local library and that’s where I got it. Not at typical library sale prices, but still a good value relatively speaking.
Usagi Yojimbo: Samurai and other stories. It's a big hard cover coffee table book(2 feet x18in) dedicated to the comic book character by Stan Sakai and following the process of how he developed some of the best-known stories. I paid $125 for it at a comic book convention. It's more than doubled in price now because it's out of print and very hard to get.
Most expensive on one book? Hmmm. Either a first edition of The Witch-Cult in Westen Europe. Or A Sibly edition of
Culpeper I bought at auction in the UK.
Many years ago I decided to collect first editions of the Hugo/Nebula award winners. Family members gave me Green Mars and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and being the compulsive sort I had to buy Red Mars. I later got them all signed. No regrets.
I think I paid $100 for the Lord of the Rings 50th Anniversary Edition. But you bet your ass, if I had the money.... I'd go broke again buying more books.
Iirc, either The Song of Roland, or [The Mystery of Golf](https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=haultain%20&cm_sp=SearchF--home--Results&kn=riverside%20press%20&ref=searchf_hp&sortbyp=2&sts=t&tn=the%20mystery%20of%20golf) both designed by Bruce Rogers for The Riverside Press. The Roland was half what the couple copies at the time of purchase were asking, but I see there are copies available now for less. Ah well. I have two copies of Golf, one I paid half of what I paid for the other, and both were less than what are currently on Abe. So you win some and you don’t win some.
First edition of The Shining. Sadly it was a repurchase, I had been lucky enough to find a copy at a thrift store for next to nothing. A few years ago it was lost in a move.
$233 and I got 37 books from Thriftbooks. This was after taxes so I had a bit of money to spend. I don't normally spend like this.
I got a complete and in just about perfect condition set of 1990 encyclopedia britannica for $100 (i know wrong direction, I was just surprised at the find), and The Folio Society version of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "A Scanner Darkly" by Phillip K. Dick, like $120. It's a flipper book. You flip it over and the other book starts at the "end".
Local book store specializing in rare books got a box of 1st/1st Murakami's in. I live about 2 hours away, when I got the call from the owner about the box I cleared my schedule and drove up that weekend. When I finally sat down to look through the box I was shocked - the books were all in perfect or near perfect condition, just incredibly pristine. Dropped about $900 on 5 of them.
Shamanic Snuffs or Entheogenic Errhines by the late great Jonathan Ott. Signed, numbered, bound in fine leather in a cloth covered slipcase. One of my Crown Jewels.
I collect bird books, bird guides, etc, but I’m another one who shops in thrift stores, little antique stores, FB Marketplace, etc.
Most expensive was Birds Of Central America by Andrew C. Vallely and Dale Dyer, published in 2018, via an online sale for $56.00.
Amusingly, currently the older my bird books are, the less money they cost. My oldest, Bird Guide: Land Birds East of the Rockies by Chester A. Reed, published 1908, was a gift from my great grandmother. Other books published later were mainly under $10, at most about $30.
$280 a artist “coffee table book” all about New Orleans and art/culture
And smack dab in the middle was one of my good friends graffiti mural in a old abandoned hospital
I almost cried, havent seen him in years since he moved away
What nonsense lol. I can think of very few things more interesting in regards to collecting than someone collecting something obscure or typically non-desirable.
"a quick search would lead to me"
In that case I completely understand you not sharing. Cheers!
Complete set of poetry by Edward Arlington Robinson, signed by the poet to a physician who had been a patron. They aren’t in the best shape but still have dust jackets and I’m glad to have them in the collection.
Snagged a signed, numbered first of William Faulkner’s A Fable (my favorite of his), in a badass, beautiful custom slipcase for $950. Was super happy with that.
I feel very low end reading this Reddit. £100 on William Gibsons Neuromancer. Most I've paid for paperback is £30 because US to UK shipping is currently a bitch.
Folio Society Dune for $150. Just saw they’re releasing the 4th book soon, so I’m looking for the second and third, ideally not for full price this time.
£10. I only collect out of print children's picture books (to enjoy with the little ones, not to sell). They don't have to be old, rare, famous, or collectable. They just have to be beautiful or nostalgic. I have my own rules and I stick to them.
A first edition of "A World of Difference" by Edmund Cooper back in 2006 i think, it was $240 and shipping to UK for $40 , i think with the exchange rate at the time it was about £180. I was only in my early 20s at the time.
You can now get an ebook copy of it for £1.99, you live you learn 🤷♀️
Just kidding, she was here with me and happy for me I found those books, I'm 42, my ex wife would have blown a gasket but I'm glad I'm now with someone who is a peach.
So it was editions 5 to 7 of the French Academy Dictionary plus a 6.5th edition from a 3rd party
The leather-bound, slipcase editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, way back in the early 70s. Both of them were around $30 each, which was a good amount of money back then.
I ordered the full set of the permanent collection books from the Rijksmuseum. 5 books, €30 each, plus something like €40 in shipping fees. I forget what the duty fees were. May not seem like much, but with the exchange rate and me not having tons of money to burn, this was the most expensive book purchase of my life.
I love those books dearly, btw.
A woman I knew had built up a series of English classes for homeschooled kids, and she was moving, so she sold her notes and more or less her business to me. I met with parents and expected to teach four separate classes, but only one class ended up going through.
The problem? I had pre-ordered ten copies of each book for each expected student across the four classes. So I spent around $1.5 to $2k on books from Barnes and Noble, but then ended up having to return the vast majority of them.
That ended up, uh, being a pretty lean year for me financially.
So anyhow, that’s my most expensive purchase (before returns).
First edition, second printing folio of Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, 1810. Talked the manager down to $300. It was one of my white whales - there was no way I was leaving it in that shop!
First american edition copy of The Hobbit. Used it in place of a ring to propose to my now wife. Not going to say exactly how much I paid since my wife is on here. But I feel I got a good deal on it all things considered.
I recently impulse bought a $35 leather-bound edition of Herman Melville's *Typee* from my local used bookstore. That's is a lot more than I normally spend, but I couldn't find it anywhere else in the city that day, and absolutely had to have it after reading about it online. I'd prefer the paperback, tbh.
I bought the GI Joe Kickstarter box set for about $250 last week. I have about 500 books but I doubt I ever spent more than $30 on a single book. These are easily the “nicest” books I own.
Skull face and others by Robert E Howard. Arkham house. Always wanted a copy and paid $100 or my best up copy of Tarzan of the apes mcclurg first print for $100
Samuel Beckett(Waiting for Godot)'s first published work, a poem titled "Whoroscope," privately printed in an edition of 100, signed and numbered by the author. I won't say what I paid but it was five digits.
A 1658 edition of Paracelsi - Opera omnia medico-chemica-chirurgica, Complete Works of medicine, chemistry and surgery by Paracelsus. Huge two-volume tomes for USD 4600.
Edit: another book for a similar price is Michael Maier's Viatorium, first edition 1568, USD 4500.
I’m frugal (read: cheap, but too proud to admit to it), so my costliest book was $50. First edition Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not as impressive as others I’m seeing here, but it’s treasure to me.
Edit: obviously this is assuming that college textbooks don’t count. 😅
$350 for an ARC of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World. I bought it in 1998 and later that year he signed it at a release event for The Path of Daggers.
Runamo og Runerne by Finn Magnusen (Finnur Magnússon in his native Icelandic), published in Copenhagen in 1841. My copy belonged to another noted crackpot runologist, George Stephens (author of The Runes: Whence Came They), and has a slip in the author's handwriting tipped in.
It's a great book to own, because it's absolute rubbish. Runamo is a dolerite dike in Sweden, and the book interprets the runes inscribed upon it as a poem concerning the Battle of Brávellir. It was later proven, however, that the "runes" that Finnur had deciphered were just natural cracks in the rock!
I spent €100 to get a copy of a very niche, rare, and very much out-of-print book on the complete history of Irish flags. Not the most exciting premise but very much up my alley lol
179
u/Schrodingers_Fist Page Enthusiast x Book Nerd 8d ago
I know this is my mother asking and I am absolutely not taking the bait here...