The most important factor in modern book collecting is also probably the most misunderstood and the most often ignored. I speak of condition. As in many other fields of collecting, particularly stamps and coins, condition plays an enormous part in determining prices. The premium placed on condition increases geometrically rather than arithmetically, as has been proven time and time again in the auction house. An example of this phenomenon occurred when the Jonathan Goodwin collection was auctioned in 1977 and 1978, in three landmark sessions. Mr. Goodwin had invariably acquired the best possible copy, and his willingness to pay premium prices for superb examples paid off when the collection was sold. Virtually every book in the collection set record prices precisely because its condition was so unbelievably high. Many beginning collectors (and inexperienced dealers) read of such prices and naively assume that they apply to all copies of the books, which they do not.
To a collector, the ideal is a book as fresh and bright and perfect in every respect as it was on the day it was issued. Obviously, it is hard to find copies in such condition, particularly from the period prior to World War II, when collectors were not nearly as concerned with condition as they are today. This is especially true of dust jackets, which were often ignored by even the best collectors of that period. It is for this reason that the books of F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, often go for ten times as much with jackets as do sound copies without the jackets. One university I know of has a cutoff date of 1930, refusing to buy a book issued after that date without its dust jacket. Some collectors refuse to buy any book without the dust jacket, preferring to wait and pay the premium for a jacketed copy. Obviously, here, as in all phases of collecting, a little common sense has to be employed. There are some books so rare that you would be well advised to purchase whatever copy comes along; you may go the rest of your life and never find another copy in any state. (I suspect this may well turn out to be the case with the previously mentioned Pound translation of The Call of the Road. The only copy I have ever seen or heard of in twenty-five years is one of three books in my own collection without a jacket.) If a book is that scarce, you will have no trouble in disposing of your unjacketed copy should you be fortunate enough to locate one with a jacket.
The jackets of thick books, such as Gone with the Wind or any of the novels of Thomas Wolfe, tend to wear out much faster than the jackets of slimmer volumes, simply in the process of being read. Accordingly, they are likely to be scarce, especially in fine condition. Well-jacketed books thus invariably command premiums over and above the normal price. For most modern books, the price of a copy with a fine jacket will be twice that of a copy without the jacket, and the price for one with a worn or tattered jacket somewhere between the two, the exact difference being determined, of course, by the degree of wear.
Quite a few modern books, particularly little press productions and deluxe, limited editions with fancy bindings, are issued without dust jackets in the usual sense of the term. They may have glassine or clear acetate jackets without printing on them. Glassine, especially, is fragile and over the years tends to become brittle and tear easily. The term “original glassine” is often encountered in dealers’ catalogs when such books are being described, with such copies commanding approximately the same premium as books with their original printed dust jackets. But there is widespread disagreement among dealers and collectors over just how much one can depend on such a description, even with the most scrupulous of dealers. Glassine is easily replaced, and, so far as I know, there is no easy way of determining whether glassine is “original” or of fairly recent vintage. Actually, glassine tends to yellow slightly as well as to become brittle, but short of expensive chemical carbon testing, there is no way of proving or disproving its “originality.” With clear acetate the problem is almost hopeless. For this reason, many collectors do not attach the same importance to glassine and acetate as they do to printed dust jackets. It is simply a matter of being realistic. And incidentally I have yet to read a catalog description where the glassine was described as anything but “original.”
One hears a good deal of talk about jackets being “married” to copies of books. This refers to a jacket that was not originally on the specific copy of the book, but was placed on it at a later date. Some people consider this somehow reprehensible, although personally I see no harm in it as long as the correct jacket is placed on the book and the binding of the book itself is not worn or faded. The jackets are usually identical, and at some point in the book’s production it had to be “married” to its jacket, so I cannot see why there should be a fuss made. Quite often a dealer will come across a copy of a book with two jackets (it used to be standard practice for a publisher’s publicity department to send out review copies with an extra jacket in case the newspaper or magazine wanted to use it as an illustration for the review) and most dealers will save the extra one to place on a copy that they may eventually acquire without a jacket. Most collectors are willing to accept such copies; in fact, virtually every collector I have ever encountered is perfectly willing to perform such a service himself, sometimes continuing to upgrade the condition of jackets throughout his entire collecting career.
Of the book itself the area most subject to wear is the binding. This should be, ideally, free from signs of wear or obvious damage. However, what is termed “shelf wear,” if not serious, should not be an important factor, for it is virtually inevitable, particularly on most modern novels with three-piece cloth and paper bindings. The bottom edge of such books will become unavoidably darkened from sliding on and off the shelf. Sometimes the paper will split, or break through. At this point the wear must be considered serious. Such worn copies are bound to be less valuable than perfect ones.
Paperbacks are more susceptible to wear than hardcovers. Most commercial paperbacks are bound in a flexible card stock that has been coated with a plastic laminate on the outside. This coating easily crackles if the cover is bent too far, and there is no method of correcting it. Another problem frequently encountered with paperbacks is that of pages loosening and falling out. This happens when a paperback is handled roughly, or too often, since most of the cheaper paperbacks nowadays are “perfect” bound, an ambiguous trade term meaning that loose sheets are glued together and then a cover glued around them (as opposed to groups of folded sheets being sewn together for binding). Obviously, with frequent handling, such a book will begin to disintegrate fairly quickly. With age, moreover, certain glues become brittle and weak. There is a different problem presented by deluxe, little-press limited editions. Their paper is usually of a better quality, but a frequent flaw is the fraying of the overlap edges. Any edge of a book cover that is wider than the actual pages is referred to either as an “overlap” or “wallet” edge. Over the years, since there is no body to support these edges, they become frayed, chipped, and snagged, detracting from the book’s value. Even when a protective envelope is used, considerable care has to be taken when removing or replacing the book, since the soft, handmade papers of these editions are easily caught and snagged. There is little that can be done about snagging once it has occurred. Some collectors place tape on the inside edge of the covers to reinforce them, but this is rather a dangerous procedure; most tapes have chemicals that will eat through the paper, or, at the very least, leave an unsightly stain. If the book is of sufficient value, a trained conservationist can restore the damaged edge by replacing chips where possible and then sealing it with a plastic lamination. This not only preserves it but prevents further deterioration. Depending on the vintage of the book, a moderate amount of such fraying has to be expected, especially on books dating from the first quarter of this century. Perhaps the most famous example of a paperback with a wallet edge is the first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses published in Paris in 1922. It was an unusually thick book, the paper covers rather insubstantial (in fact the spine was too weak to support the weight of the book). Copies were extremely hard to come by at the time of publication and were usually passed from hand to hand as reading copies, resulting in considerable wear and tear. Quite often the covers were deliberately removed to make the book easier to smuggle past U.S. and British customs agents, who were prepared to seize it as pornography. Thus copies of Ulysses with the covers in perfect condition are virtually impossible to find, and correspondingly fetch far higher prices than do copies with some wear and tear or restoration to the spine. With moderately poor condition the norm, most collectors are willing to accept it, so long as the wear is not too disfiguring or too extensive.
This leads to another aspect of condition—rebinding. There are many copies of Ulysses that have been rebound, for the reasons cited above. They bring far lower prices than copies with the original blue wrapper covers, even those with some restoration to the spine. Once a book has been rebound, it has lost much of its value as a collector’s item. Rebinding of modern books—that is, any books originally issued in publisher’s bindings, standard practice since the first half of the nineteenth century—while perhaps aesthetically pleasing, is not only expensive, but also destroys much of the bibliographic interest and a large part of the value of the book. In the case of twentieth-century books, rebinding is seldom done. If a modern book is in such poor condition as to make rebinding imperative, the chances are very much against the game’s being worth the candle. There are, of course, a few modern books that are so rare that even a rebound copy can be acceptable. A few years ago I had a rebound copy of Ezra Pound’s A Lume Spento, his first book and one of the rarest books of twentieth-century poetry. A collector of first books had desired this title for a great many years, and he bought the rebound copy, but not without misgivings. And despite the book’s actual rarity (fewer than thirty copies are known to have survived out of the original one hundred printed at Pound’s own expense in 1908), within the space of two years he sold it. He is still searching for a copy in the original wrappers. I could mention a few other titles of such rarity as to make rebound condition acceptable, but there aren’t many of them, and more common books, such as the novels of John Updike or the later books of Evelyn Waugh, are plentiful enough to make it totally out of the question to consider rebound copies.
Condition is naturally important inside the book, too. There are many things that can detract from value. One of the most common is roughly opened pages. Many books issued with untrimmed pages must be opened before the book can be read. Some careless or lazy persons attempt to do this with a finger, inevitably making uneven edges, and often tearing portions out of a page. It is unwise to use a sharp knife to open pages either, as it may easily slide away from the folded edge and leave a long gash in the page proper. The safest method is to use either a paperknife or, curiously, an ordinary playing card. The card has enough strength to do the job, but none of the dangerous sharpness of a blade. Whether or not the pages of an unopened book should be opened at all is a matter over which there is no agreement among collectors and dealers. If you adhere to the principle that the ideal copy of a book is one in exactly the condition in which it was issued, then the pages should be left unopened. But this of course precludes reading the book at all. The majority of collectors adopt the sensible attitude that a book, even a collector’s item, is designed to be read, and while dealers always like to make note of unopened condition when describing a book, I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that an actual premium is placed on an unopened copy in comparison with an opened copy.
Soiled pages are bound to detract from the value of a copy, as will writing or underlining, unless this writing is by the book’s author or by some famous person whose comments are themselves of interest. But extreme caution should be taken before erasing anything in a book. Many an unsuspecting person has erased the very thing that would have made a particular copy of a book valuable. One of the most horrifying incidents of this kind occurred some years ago in England, when a collector noticed a clerk in a bookstore erasing penciled notations from a stack of books, then placing each cleaned copy on a bargain table. Finally, the customer’s curiosity got the upper hand, and as the clerk was placing the final volume on the table, he asked why such trouble was being taken. “Oh,” replied the clerk, “we always erase all previous owner’s notations. It makes the books easier to sell.” But in this case the books had come from the library of the poet A. E. Housman! It was, of course, too late to salvage anything. All the books had been dutifully purged not only of the markings, but also of their scholarly interest and monetary value.
So it does not pay to be in too much of a hurry to erase traces of previous ownership in modern books. You can never tell who may grow into an important author some few years hence, and what is simply an unsightly signature today may be tomorrow’s prized autograph. Let well enough alone. There is usually little if any difference in value between a copy with a signature on the flyleaf and one without, particularly in books dating from before World War II. Elaborate inscriptions or signatures on title pages (always excepting those of noted persons) do detract in general from both appearance and value, although not significantly unless the appearance is truly marred by unsightly effusive scrawling. Soiled spots, fingermarks, and such like can be removed (if you know how), but either let signatures alone or wait until you can find an unsigned copy. Pencil marks are usually easily removed, but ink presents more serious problems. Old-fashioned fountain-pen ink can be removed with standard ink removers, but since these are acid-based, there is the concurrent danger of harming the paper fibers. Ball-point ink is the hardest of all to remove and should be done only by experts. In general, eradication of signatures is best not attempted by amateurs. And even if the signature does not turn out to be a valuable one, a dated sign of ownership may well help establish the date of publication. With little presses, which come and go with very brief life spans, it is often impossible to ascertain even a few years later just when a book was published. Most such little presses do not keep detailed records, and a large majority of the books they issue are never copyrighted; as a result bibliographers are often stymied for even approximate information on publication dates and prices. While it may not be evidence that would stand up in court, a dated signature of ownership is some sort of guide, and may help narrow the possibilities for a bibliographer.
Obvious defects, such as a missing page—especially an illustration or the title page—are virtually fatal. Such copies are termed “cripples” in the trade, for obvious reasons, and I can think of no modern book so rare that a cripple should be bought at all. You will always have an incomplete copy, one that will be difficult if not impossible to resell, and one that is of little interest to anyone. And you yourself will always want a better, perfect copy.
In the chapter on dealers I suggested that some of the terms used to describe condition are at best vague, even though not intentionally so. Simply because certain words can convey a wide variety of meanings and shades of meanings, it may help clarify matters a little to set forth here the terms most often used in book dealers’ catalogs describing condition:
MINT, PRISTINE, SUPERB All three terms are practically synonymous for the perfect copy, bright and fresh as the day it was published.
VERY FINE Almost the same—flawless. Generally used by the more conservative dealers.
FINE Slightly below “very fine” but still a copy showing no defects.
VERY GOOD This term may possibly confuse beginners, who may misunderstand this to mean a fine copy. “Very good” copies are usually rather worn and obviously have been read more than once. Generally speaking, “very good” copies are a bit below acceptable standards for truly serious collectors.
GOOD Almost at the bottom of the condition scale. The term is often expanded into the phrase “a good working copy,” meaning that the book is textually complete, but the binding and other condition factors are below grade. Such copies are of use mainly to students and scholars who want reading copies from which to work.
POOR The worst possible condition, usually hopelessly bad. It is seldom encountered in a catalog, since most dealers will not stock copies in such condition. There may be the occasional exception where a book is of such rarity that any copy must be considered; and in unusual cases an impecunious collector who cannot ever hope to afford a fine copy will accept a poor copy rather than never own the title at all.
To sum up, the importance of condition is always a matter of personal taste, and though condition determines the price of a book, one must be realistic. It makes no sense to be a “condition crank” or to let condition become an obsession. Remember that even new books are handled several times before they reach a dealer’s shelf, and a minuscule flyspeck on the dust jacket is not fatal.