Hi, Saturday, January 11, 2003, 10:21:58 PM, you wrote:
>> I've only got eight photography books so far, but I haven't been at this long >> -- just give me time. Hehehe. > Actually, I know a fair amount about books. I was in charge of the Rare Book > Room at one of the colleges I attended and would have gone to work for the > Library of Congress if it hadn't been for the election of Ronald Reagan. I [...] > 4. Most copies have gone into libraries or collections; book is scarce, > found mostly on the used / rare market, value rises. I worked for the British Library at the end of the 1970s and began my photo book collection there. Because it's a copyright deposit library (or whatever the phrase is) publishers have to send at least one copy to the BL, so it was easy and pleasurable to look at any book I wanted. Regional libraries used to send their old books to the BL to be scavenged, and if the BL already had enough copies then the incoming books would be burnt. So periodically we would have a rummage through the ones due for the furnace and get what we could. I rescued quite a few good photo books that way that are now worth quite a bit of money, although being ex lib. does affect the price. However, once I have the book the market price doesn't matter because I only buy books that I like - predominantly reportage, documentary and photojournalism - and I keep them. I'm not a trader. A few years ago I bought a copy of "Vietnam, Inc." - the first edition, not the reprint, at a reasonable price (these things are relative, of course). Last year I got to meet Philip Jones Griffiths and he kindly signed it for me. He said "That'll double the value". Which it probably does, if I ever wanted to sell it. He told me that even he doesn't have a 1st edition any more, and hasn't had for years. On the way home it dawned on me that the classy thing to do would have been to give him the book. Oh well, too late. --- Bob
