For Collectors - ABAA Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America

Introduction to Book Collecting
Former ABAA President Ken Lopez welcomes you to our Collectors' Corner, and introduces a fitting article on the topic of book collecting, written by two acknowledged experts in the field, ABAA members Allen and Patricia Ahearn.

Evaluating Books
Find out more about the factors involved in determining the value of old books and manuscripts.

Seeking a Book?
Can't find that book you were looking for? Fill in this form and get notified when a bookseller is able to help you get it.

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Member Articles
Many of our ABAA members are also accomplished authors. Within this section, we showcase some of their best articles, covering a broad range of topics.

Receiving Members Catalogues
Would you like to receive catalogues published by our members? Fill in this form and receive catalogues within your field of interest.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can I tell how much my book is worth? How do I know if an autograph is real? You've got questions we've got the answers!

Glossary of Terms
An abbreviated glossary that covers the most commonly encountered terms in the antiquarian book field.

F O R C O L L E C T O R S

Collecting Mark Twain; A History and Three New Paths
Mark Twain's world-wide appeal endures because his writings appeal to very different people in very different ways. Many of his contemporary readers saw him as a sort of genial corn-pone clown, a grandfatherly figure with a benign wit, and for better or worse, this is the image that persists in the popular mind today. By Kevin MacDonnell.

Why Collect Proofs?
Proof copies, if you follow your nose and are willing to take small risks, can be great investments--because even if the author doesn't "hit" and the monetary values don't go sky-high, you've still got a scarce, unusual, often textually significant version of the author's work. By Ken Lopez.

Splendors & Miseries of Being an Author-Bookseller
"Edmund Wilson has a famous grumpy essay called 'Thoughts on Being Bibliographed'"; the source of his grumpiness was the uneasy knowledge that, as a prolific author, he had written some things that were valuable and some things that were trivial: he was not happy to have the bibliographers remind him of the trivia. By Larry McMurtry.

Research Resources
Links to bibliographic societies, libraries and a number of other useful references and resources.

Book Collecting Links
Looking for more information about book collecting? We've compiled a list of links to sites that cover a gamut of topics, from award-winning books and collected authors, to book preservation and valuation, with much more in between.