Where Can I Find Old, Rare, & Antique Books?

a frequent question when people come into the shop here when they see piles of books from the 16th 17th 18th centuries is where do you get all of these old books now some dealers might find that question a little bit naive like we've got to tell you as a customer what our secret sources are but this is not Kentucky Fried Chicken there's no secret sauce here and I'm going to tell you some places where you can find interesting antiquarian books so whether you're a collector new in the field or if you want to get into the antiquarian book business which is a lot of fun and buying and selling these some places you can go and of course years ago every town and every city almost had an antiquarian bookshop that you could go in you could browse the material and you could really interact with books interact with books as a physical object and learn all the nuances of what makes a book collectible or valuable unfortunately how those shops have disappeared because of high rents other things in the market and dealers have brought their inventory home or into offices and put it online so those places unfortunately don't exist like in years past if you have a book shop in your area please go into it and you know interact with the books buy it and enjoy them but for a lot of people who don't have book shops in their vicinity when the best place is to go are book fairs now I'm a member of the ABA which is the antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and if you go on to the ABA website they have a list occasionally of ABA sponsored book fairs which are often the largest and most prestigious at the book fairs they take place in New York and in Boston in California etc and those are wonderful places to visit they're often 150 plus dealers who attended fairs who have been saving some of their best material to put on display to attract an interest collectors and you can really interact with the material there you can see what is exciting and valuable in the market and you can talk to dealers we're often very knowledgeable and their specific fields and want to share that knowledge I want to get people excited about that material I can assure you you know if you're novice going to feel like that you might think all the stuff is fully priced dealers know what they're doing I can tell you as a dealer buying for stock I've got in some of my best buys from other dealers at shows nobody can know everything things get mispriced there are plenty of bargains to be had especially if you're knowledgeable in one specific area you can find some wonderful things and of course even if you're not a dealer that is the place to go as a collector so go on to the ABA website of course there's other book fairs which are not affiliated with the ABA sometimes these even crop up at the same time as the major fairs they call them shadow fairs and a lot of dealers even run to those fairs as soon as they're open to see you know what treasures they can find from other lesser-known dealers who affordance material to the fair for instance so book fairs is a wonderful place you can also of course buy directly from dealers if you go on to the ABA website you may not have a book shop in your area but you can locate an ABA dealer where as a specialization they may have office hours they may make an appointment for you to come over either their home or their office and look at materials so it's well worth looking at the directory on the ABA website to see if there's a dealer near you so that's one way you can start getting acquainted or getting into antiquarian books buying from dealers directly or at books there's another great place is of course auctions of course we can go to the internet Grand Daddy at the mall eBay Bay has it's a little bit still at the Wild West when it comes to books there is a special category of antiquarian books on eBay and you can find everything from books offered at auctions starting at $1 then you have to bid to you know fix price listings of antiquarian material some of it takes a little bit of knowledge a little bit of experience because some of these dealers are not like known dealers and the antiquarian organization they can be anybody mom and pops people can ask anything so there can occasionally be misrepresentation books may not be complete maybe miss described things like that of course eBay does have protections for returns and but it's still overall is an excellent place to search for interesting material either for stock or for collecting outside of eBay there of course the auction houses now you can look at the top-tier auction houses there's like southern B's and Christie's and bottoms now you may not be ready to jump into the deep end and purchase high-priced books especially with the premiums of the auction houses add-on but even if you're not a buying debt it's always worth getting their catalogs reading their catalogs to see what really generates excitement in the market today I myself always at the end of the major sales whether I bought I didn't buy a look through the prices realized because I like to see what surprises there were what books went to the moon that I didn't anticipate would do so well because that really helps inform me you know when I'm buying books from looking at collections to keep my eye out for certain subjects and authors things like that there are also other auction houses that are frequent sales like Swan galleries in New York they have many sales throughout the year and they can sell unlike the major houses where Lots can be it's $1 they can sell book starting the low hundreds of dollars all the way up to books that of course you know get extraordinary prices if they were lucky enough to get imported consignments into that auction so checkout Swan galleries that is another excellent auction house you can also go on rare book hub rare book hub provides an excellent calendar of auctions in America and abroad throughout the year and you can click through their calendar and see what's coming up and a lot of these catalogs are available online and sometimes you can visit so it's good to see the books firsthand but if you can't you can contact the auction house in they're usually very helpful and very willing to send additional pictures answer questions so that is an excellent way you know to find auctions that are available through the rare book hub calendar and start exploring that of course outside of that there are websites where you can buy directly from dealers you can go on to again the antiquarian book sellers Association of America website and dealers post their catalogs and they have a place where you can search and look for books that are offered by ABA dealers there are other major sites like I've mentioned in previous videos I like particularly to look at via libri that is like a mega search engine that incorporates a lot of sources for books so if you're looking for material you can type keywords or you can browse through to see what's available and then what prices many of these sites like via Libre or a libres or a ebooks which is when the major ones have functions where you can price order them as a dealer I sometimes know I often check material I'm buying to see if it's already online and what they're asking but I also look at newly listed material which is a good way to find material that is fresh to market the dealers have just put on because a lot of times if there's something good that will be snapped up quickly so you can use their search functions to look for newly listed material that way it often I'll find some bargains so these are a few ways again to look for sources for antiquarian books whether you are going to the book fairs talking to dealers looking at auctions contacting dealers directly or going on some of the major book search engines it's a lot of fun to buy material it can be a profitable hobby it can eventually turn into a profitable business and I hope some of that information is of use to you so I will be giving in the future of you know more tips about the antiquarian book trade so I hope you will hit the subscribe button and look for future videos thanks you

Channel: Adam Weinberger Rare Book Buyer

Views: 22,527

Keywords: rare books, antique books, old books, Antiquarian, rare book value, rare book websites, old book value, book auctions, book fairs, adam pawn stars, pawn stars, rebecca pawn stars, pawns stars books, pawn stars old books, rebecca books pawn stars

Id: w3w9oRnA4KA

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019