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Comment by vodou | Hacker News Reader

Most books are, sadly, quite worthless nowadays (monetary value). But the Tove Jansson illustrated, swedish edition of Bilbo is still a sought-after book that usually goes for hundreds of dollars.

Here is an ongoing auction on Tradera (the swedish ebay), currently at SEK 3050 (~$320):

https://www.tradera.com/item/341571/686383148/j-r-r-tolkien-...

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>Most books are, sadly, quite worthless nowadays (monetary value).

I am not sure I understand. Aren't books "worthless" because they are readily available? Books are only expensive if they are rare (out of print, special limited edition, hand made or labor intensive, author signed, etc.). I don't think I would want "most" books to be rare and difficult to obtain.

This is only partly true. The fact that the OP is referring to is the fact that books aren't sought after. Many books that have been bought for a 100 dollars in 1980 are worth only a few dollars nowadays even if they are relevant. Not many people look for used books.

There are plenty of books which are scarce but not sought after. Not necessarily because they lack intrinsic value but simply because they are forgotten. Beautifully crafted antique books which can be bought for almost nothing nowadays since the collector’s value isn’t there.

Not my experience - the Victorian books I bought cheap as a teenager I wouldn't even attempt to replace these days. Maybe the books I'm interested in held their value for some reason. (Just picked one at random, the exact binding I have isn't in abe, but the two closest, less decorative examples are 135GBP and 195GBP).

If you find someone who has cataloged and listed what they have, especially of “pre-ISBN” books you’re going to have a certain price floor. And if you want a book, likely others do, too.

But you also can find them and garage and thrift stores, languishing unsold.

Wonder Books has a concept of how to save them: https://booksbythefoot.com/about/

Which perhaps people buying books because how they look on the shelf is bad, but is it worse than the giant recycling grinder machine turning them into pulp to fuel Amazon’s Mordor-esque delivery furnaces?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to sell, or even give away, books. In Stockholm, Sweden, where I am most familiar with the situation, most charity second-hand stores no longer accept hardcover books at all. The monetary value of most second-hand books is so low that many end up being thrown away instead of recirculated.

Of course, there are rare antiquarian books that always find a buyer, but they are quite few. And perhaps nobody will mourn the vast number of cheap crime novels thrown away every day, but there is so much more: good, beautiful, high-quality books that happen to be out of fashion for the moment. These, too, are being thrown away.

It was a long time since public libraries aimed to maintain a somewhat curated (or complete-ish) collection. Nowadays it is all about statistics. If books are not borrowed often enough, they are removed from the shelves and disappear.

Perhaps I am overly pessimistic, but I fear that many, many books will, for all intents and purposes, be lost. There are so many books that aren't scanned/digitized.

Or there is _The Old English Exodus_ which is four figures (and annoyingly, the son of the author gainsaid my request for permission to reprint).

Wow, printed in 1994

Yeah, look at that! Fourteenth edition. Then it stayed in print for more than 30 years. I guess earlier editions are even more expensive.

A bit strange though. So many editions should mean there are quite a few in circulation and that they aren't that rare, or pricey.

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