@prizedpages wrote:
Thank you. The seller I found runs a book shop as I could see by the photos they used. Many of the books sold were Easton Press and other books that looked to be in very good condition ...
Well, that explains a lot. People who buy Easton press books are not readers. Great heavens, man, if you read an Easton it would lose its value! I mean, it is considered vandalism to even take off the shrink-wrap! 😄
Here are the delightful words of the late Joe Maraglino, bookseller extrordinaire, posted many years ago to the Booksellers Board when it was both a lively and a useful forum:
Collectors of modern books are unlike other bibliophiles; they value their books not for their content, but for their form as a physical object - the book has the most value to them when it is in the same pristine condition as it was when it left the publisher. If the book has never been opened - or better still is shrinkwrapped so that it cannot be opened or sullied by the touch of a living organism - they are happier still. Inside its plastic sarcophagus, the book might be missing leaves, be bound upside down, or, for that matter, might even be nothing more than an assemblage of blank leaves, but these possibilities don't matter - what matters is that the book appears through its Holy Shrinkwrap© to be perfect - and it is the appearance of perfection which they collect.
The modernist eschews any additions to a physical book other than an author's signature - and even then, their preference is for a signature only, without any inscription whatsoever. Inscriptions create provenance, and provenance means that someone else once owned the book, and perhaps actually read it - leaving unsightly eyetracks on the printed text and illustrations. Ex libris in any form - the printed bookplate, a previous owner's name, inked or embossed stamps, or a gift inscription - reduce the value of the book in the eyes of the modernist because they detract from the book's perceived perfection.
The bibliophile of ages past - and the contemporary collector of early books - values the book for its content, its provenance, its humanist qualities, which mark the passage (both literally and figuratively) of the lives of previous owners. Marginalia is studied assiduously in the search for ideas related to the book's content. Underlined passages are read with great care, since they clearly meant enough to some long-dead scholar that they were underlined in the first place. Provenance is examined and where possible, the content of the collection from which the book came is studied as well, with the idea that you can tell much about a book's social value from its past owners. Most importantly, however, books are read - but this process requires the expenditure of energy, considerable investment in both time and the power of thought, and does nothing to maintain the perceived perfection of the physical object.
Freud had a theory about the modern collector - this person who endeavours to surround himself or herself with the outward signs of perfection - and that is that because they cannot control their lives as a whole, they must, to compensate for this fact, direct their efforts to those things over which they can exert control - and in these things, they find the perceived perfection which is lacking in the balance of their lives. Freud thought (and here I paraphrase) that for every perfect Stephen King dustwrapper, there was a chap with a drinking problem; for every flawless Lord Of The Rings Special Edition slipcase, there was a lass who couldn't keep her weight in check; for every pristine example of Watership Down, there was a couple whose marriage was dull and lacklustre.
Whatever the reason, the modernist seeks perfection in the books which comprise her or his collection, and imperfection - whether it is or is not an imprinting of some other cause - is not to be tolerated. Where the bibliophile will examine a book's content microscopically, the modernist will examine the physical book in the same fashion - analysing the dustwrapper under black light, through a jeweler's loupe, for any signs of surface scratches. To the bibliophile, the presence of a previous owner's bookplate brings a smile and consideration for who the past owner might have been; to the modernist, a bookplate simply mars the perfection of the front pastedown, thus taking from them the joy of attaining perfection some place in their lives.
And if you think that the modernist wrings his hands, whimpers like a whipped dog, and foams at the mouth at the very sight of a bumped corner, you should see what happens the first time that they see a rat bite.
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