The Worth of Rare Books - An Interview with ILAB President Arnoud Gerits ILAB-LILA
Are there other criteria to classify a book as "antiquarian"?
There are no clear definitions that distinguish “rare books” from “old books” or “antiquarian books”. The standard definition of an antiquarian book is a book over 100 years old, traditionally antiquarian books are those printed before 1800. But through usage the meaning has changed and rare books can now include 20th century books. It must be remembered that there are 19th and 20th century books that are much more difficult to find than a good number of 16th and 17th century books.
There is a tendency to consider those books which have shaped the history of mankind as the most important or desirable books (Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, William Harvey, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Baruch de Spinoza etc. etc.), but one can as well build a library documenting the history, development and evolution of economic thought, one can collect books on mushrooms, one can collect books on mathematics, classical authors such as Dante or Goethe or Shelley, one can collect illustrated books, or only books illustrated by one particular artist.
The
International League of Antiquarian Booksellers does not encourage collecting books for investment purposes. We can tell what the price of a book was in the past, how that price has developed, we can tell what it will cost now to own a copy, but
we cannot predict what its future price will be. Our advice is always: buy what you like, what pleases you, what interests you, what fits within your areas of collecting or interest, buy the best copy available (and affordable to you) at the moment you want to buy the book.
