The Differences between the Collector and the Speculator with regards to intrinsic and monetary value.
A recent post on a message board I browse has given me this topic to explore. An interesting topic to say the least. The implication that buying books as an investment is something that collectors do and only do is something that needs to be explored. I spoke of something similar here: On the differences on Collecting and Reading in which I discussed collectors and readers and how they aren’t exclusive.
If you want to invest in anything I suggest the stock market. Much like any collectible market in the past, books will and do lose value. Anyone remember the comic book market of the late 1990s? You;re return on investment will be better in the stock market anyway. Plus certain stocks pay dividends.
Collectors tend to be readers. As I stated in the post referenced above. Collectors also tend to have a goal other than making money on their collections. Usually that goal may be amassing the most complete Fitzgerald Library or the most complete library of American Fiction prior to 1790. The reasons to collect are so varied and so broad and yet so specific. I have yet to read about a collector who’s main goal is to collect the most expensive collection ever and to sell it to make money (but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But I suspect it is very rare).
Granted there are specific volumes that make it to the auction houses and usually garner attention from the press. Maybe Shakespeare’s First Folio or a Gutenberg Bible. But these are rare and sought after books. And it is not unusual for a volume like that to be off the market for long periods of time only to make it to auction infrequently.
Speculators only goal is to make money. I don’t know how pervasive speculation in the book market is as a whole since book prices don’t tend to move over short periods of time. I suppose there are speculators in the specialty press. I suspect that the majority of speculators are in the specialty press. Since I can’t see how speculation on a Fitzgerald First Edition is going to make a return on investment fast enough for a true speculator to get involved. But a limited edition of a Stephen King book does have a market fluctuation that may bring the speculators in for a quick return.
Are speculators bad for the book collecting community? I can’t say. Artificial increase in a book’s monetary value is base don the market changes and probably speculation. The intrinsic value of that limited edition is encased in its production, publisher, and author. Eventually the price will decrease and only the books that are worth collecting will be added to collections.
Collectors can speculate on monetary value of a specific volume. It isn’t a bad thing. Making a few bucks off a portion of your collection doesn’t make you less of a collector nor does it go against any romantic idea about book collectors being the last bastion for saving written word.
Collectors just tend to love their books to the point that they find it hard to even part with them.
When someone states, “I don’t really buy books to collect, I just love reading them.” Implicates the collector in being a speculator and not being a reader. Which is wrong. It also tends to make the person making the statement feel a sense of superiority; the”I buy books for the purest reason unlike you people that buy to put them on a shelf or those that buy to sell.”
Though I am no fan of the speculator for purely being in the game to make money off of what is hot and what can sell at a fair rate of return, I can’t begrudge her that opportunity. The person that makes it known in uncertain terms that being a collector or a speculator is somehow intrinsically inferior based on an assumption that reading is the only pure activity with a book pisses me off. It shows a complete ignorance of book collectors of any type and makes an assumption that all collectors are speculators.
