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"The fluid and opportunistic marketplace that exists for rare books is a market in which underachievers can
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An avid reader and longtime rare book collector, Thomas J. Healey is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a retired partner of Goldman Sachs. He served as assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan.

I recently conducted a study that indulged my long-standing passion for rare book collecting. I examined price changes over the past 20 years of nearly 250 books regarded as literary classics to see how they performed versus other types of investments, particularly stocks and bonds.

Like many former English majors, I’ve never lost my passion for great literature and rare book collecting, even though the bulk of my life since college has been framed by the language of Wall Street. I recently hit upon an idea that allowed me to indulge in both worlds. It involved uncovering how the great modern literary classics—works like James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye—had fared over the past two decades asinvestments. Had original copies of these works appreciated in the hands of collectors? And how did they perform against other major investment vehicles like stocks and bonds?

The findings are heartening news for anyone who has ever thought about swapping stock certificates for literary classics. Over the 10-year period ending December 31, 2002, the titles examined appreciated, on average, 12 percent annually, which was better than the average annualized return of the S&P 500 and 10-year Treasury notes, and four times the increase in inflation. For the 20-year period ending in 2002, the findings were much the same: The literary titles appreciated an average of 12.3 percent annually, making them clear winners over stocks and Treasury notes.

How about the true royalty books that garnered national literary awards? I was curious to know if they could beconsidered the highfliers of their investment genre. What the study found was interesting. Classics that had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction exhibited the highest percentage returns over the 20-year period (12.5 percent versus 11.1 percent for Hugo Award winners and 9.9 percent for National Book Award winners). The real highfliers, as it turns out, were the 32 literary classics on the list that, over the 10-year period ending in 2002, won multiple literary awards—books like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. These exalted titles showed significantly greater average returns (17 percent) than those on only one awards list (11 percent).

Which specific books, then, are the greatest finds for collectors with an eye to capitalizing on their hobby? The study shows that over the 20-year period, the best-performing book in dollar returns was The Great Gatsby, which fetched $71,000 for a mint version, and the best performer in percentage terms was To Kill a Mockingbird, which rose by 29 percent. For the period 1982 to 1991, the highest return book in dollar terms was Ulysses ($20,000), while in terms of percentage gain, it was Sue Grafton’s ‘A’ Is for Alibi (51 percent). The biggest winners for the decade ending in 2002 were The Great Gatsby ($70,000) and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (43 percent).

Yet another interesting phenomenon for investment-minded collectors to consider is the appreciation potential of first books by emerging authors, which tend to have relatively small print runs. There are no better examples than ‘A’ Is for Alibi and Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, first-time books that appreciated more than 50 percent each year from 1982 to 1991.

There is another way to measure the investment value of rare books, and that is by literary genre. In the 1980s, the books with the best returns were adventure (20.4 percent), mystery (19.4 percent) and black literature (19.1 percent). In the 1990s, the best-performing genres were mystery (14.5 percent), black literature (13.9 percent) and children’s (12.6 percent). Taking the broad 20-year sweep, the biggest winner by genre was black literature (17.5 percent), followed by mystery (16.4 percent) and children’s (13.8 percent).

The study’s results—limited though they may be—are interesting food for thought. Additional research by others might help further illuminate the investment potential of this medium, much like the attention that has been given to great works of art as putatively shrewd investment vehicles.
- Thomas J. Healey, 02/01/2007

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Some of the authors we specialize in are:


J.R.R. Tolkien

Ernest Hemingway

Mark Twain

Stephen King

L. Frank Baum

John Steinbeck

Zane Grey

Peter Max

Rudyard Kipling

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Vladimir Nabokov

Charles Dickens

Anne Rice

John R. Neill

Larry Mcmurtry


Best Selling Titles: View More


Seasoned Timber

by Dorothy Canfield

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Alice's Adventure In Wonderland - Plus - Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There

by Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel
 

Through The Looking Glass

by Lewis Carroll

The Edge Of The Sea

by Rachel Carson

The Sea Around Us

by Rachel Carson, Katherine L. Howe
 

Living Faith

by Jimmy Carter

Sapphira And The Slave Girl

by Willa Cather

Try And Stop Me : A Collection Of Antectdotes And Stories

by Bennett Cerf, Carl Rose, Gertrude Stein, George Kaufman, George Bernard Shaw, Moss Hart, Jimmy Durante
 

Featured Author:

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

Across The River And Into The Trees
The Bedside Esquire
Best Short Stories Of 1923 : And The Yearbook Of The American Short Story
By-line
The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan
The Dangerous Summer
Death In The Afternoon
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961
A Farewell To Arms
Fiesta Aka The Sun Also Rises
For Whom The Bell Tolls
The Garden Of Eden
Hemingway Portable
Hemingway Reader
Hemingway Reader
The Hemingway Reader
Hemingway Set - 6 Volumes
Hemingway Trio
Islands In The Stream
Life Magazine - January 6, 1941 - Hemingway & Hepburn
Men At War
Men Without Women
A Moveable Feast
The Nick Adams Stories
The Old Man And The Sea
The Old Man And The Sea
Papa Hemingway : A Personal Memoir
The Pocket Book Of Short Stories
Production Notes The Old Man And The Sea
The Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway
Snows Of Kilimanjaro
Sun Also Rises
The Good Life : According To Hemingway
The Next Outbreak Of Peace By Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man And The Sea In Yiddish
To Have And Have Not
True At First Light
True At First Light
Winner Take Nothing


Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born
View Full Biography


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While many of you are already familiar with our operation through ebay and elsewhere, hopefully many more of you will be discovering what our regular clients already are aware of - we are committed to providing the widest selection of books and related items available anywhere. From signed first editions by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Vladimir Nabokov to personal letters hand written by Katharine Hepburn to art work by Peter Max, Andy Warhol and countless other items we're certain you'll find of great interest.

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(We take extreme joy every time we are notified that an author and or title was 'discovered' by an interested reader due to our efforts.)

The books and items listed in our online shop are loosely categorized to better assist you in discovering interesting items, though we are certain you will also discover endless titles and authors you will be thrilled to "meet." Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions concerning the extensive list of books in our collection, or any title and or author of interest. We assure you that we can locate ANY book you are interested in.

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Rare Library collection . . . more than 40 years in the making . . . available now for the first time ... each item in the collection was individually researched and secured based on its own merits - Rare Books, First Edition Books, Signed Books, and Antique Books.
RARE BOOKS INCLUDING : FIRST EDITIONS . SIGNED and ANTIQUE BOOKS . ART and COLLECTIBLES


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