As It Pertains to Money and As It Pertains to Longevity in Literature and Collections.

A certain idea has been running through my head the past few days pertaining to the speculation of the price of a specific book or edition and whether it is some how immoral to speculate on such things. Is it some how immoral to speculate on the financial gain or loss of a specific author, book, or publisher? Does the after market price of a certain volume increase or decrease the value of the work as literature? Is the person that speculates on price of a certain volume doing some irreparable damage to book collecting, reading, rare book markets?

I plan on looking at the financial speculation side of book collecting as well as a certain type of speculation in book collecting which does and does not have something to do with monetary value of a volume. This type of speculation concerns the longevity of authors, publishers, works, or specific books as collectible based purely on their contribution to their specific genre. Though value of a author in terms of absolute dollars in the collectible market and the author’s value as a contributor to the specific field of literature go hand in hand a collector could focus on speculating that Author A will be more valuable in aesthetic terms in the future without contemplating Author A’s monetary value at all.

To speculate on an author’s longevity is one part of collecting. The collector wants to create an impressive collection. In doing so she wants to have authors and books that have made an impact on the world. Some collectors like to have bragging rights to an author they predicted would be a heavy hitter in the future. Some like to say they got in on the ground floor, per se, before a specific author became a “must have”.

In my next few posts I will be taking a look at both meanings of speculation.