Book Collecting Guide
Book Collecting Topics and Focuses
If you're looking for some ideas to jump start your book collection, or just want to browse some collections of fantastic books, you've found the place to start!
2015: Uncommonly Good Books Sold This Year
We’re closing the books on 2015! We’ve seen another successful year of bookselling and look forward to what the next one may bring. The trends in book collecting this year have been interesting to watch. The classics of literature, both old and new, continue to be sought after. Lolita was a popular book this year, as 2015 marked its 60th anniversary of publication. Other modern first editions by well known authors like Ernest Hemingway, ##author:F…
2016: Uncommonly Good Books Sold This Year
2016 has been a doozy of a year, hasn’t it? The trends in book collecting this year have been interesting to watch. The past few years have shown dystopian literature to be very popular, especially YA (young adult) series. This year, those purchases are down while non-fiction books on history, politics, and socio-economics are booming. In a fun overlap of popular culture and American history, books by and about Alexander Hamilton have been overwhelmingly sought…
2017: Uncommonly Good Books Sold This Year
Last year was the year of celebrity books and biographies, political memoirs, and modern firsts. It’s been interesting to see a few changes in the types of books that people were interested in in 2017. Collectible copies of books and broadsides from modern poets and classic poets alike were quite popular. There were more poetry books than political books sold during 2017, which is a sharp change from last year during the election cycle. Even…
2018: Uncommonly Good Books Sold this year
Another year in the books, and for many, it seemed to last far longer than a mere twelve months. Despite the rollicking ride of our current social, economic and political climate, the rare and collectible book trade seems to be booming in the face of the “death of books” that was expected by this point in time. Here are a few points of some of the most interesting books sold by Biblio booksellers in 2018…
2019: Uncommonly Good Books Sold This Year
2019 has been an intense crucible in all ways - the world is shifting, with people taking to the streets against oppressive governments, a dramatically volatile political theater, and the realities of intense climate change disasters reshaping ecosystems and cities on a global scale. The turmoil is reflected everywhere, including in the themes of rare books we’ve seen sold over the past year. For example, scientific journals and non-fiction books focusing on earth sciences have…
2020: Uncommonly Good Books Sold Here
Well, 2020 was one for the books. Let’s close it up, lock it, and stick it on a shelf in one of those chained libraries where it can safely remain under wraps. The biggest crisis of 2020 was the spread of COVID-19 and the quarantine required to handle a global virus. This year has brought a renewed interest in medical dictionaries, books on anatomy, and “plague journals,” like an 1892 diary of a Maine woman…
2021: Uncommonly Good Books Sold Here
As another tumultuous year ends, it comes as no surprise that books and ephemera related to world history, politics, and social movements were all the rage. Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America stands out as a desired work with multiple collectible copies sold. Readers found books and manuscripts dedicated to various political movements, and collectors sought after letters written by those who lived during major social revolutions and who stood on the front lines against…
2022 Year in Review: Uncommonly Good Books Sold Here
It is time that we close another year in the world of rare books - farewell, 2022! It has been an intense twelve months with political and social strife reaching across the globe, from the war in Ukraine to the culture wars in the West and a rise in authoritarian doctrine in many countries. Natural disasters and economic hardship have also been affecting people all around the world. Unsurprisingly, the trends in rare books this…
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley was a well-known and highly controversial figure in the first half of the 20th Century. A writer, occultist, magician, and mountaineer, Crowley impacted a diverse collection of sub-cultures and interests. Crowley had many passions, and writing was certainly one of them. Among his most historically significant works were his large collection of Libri, documents relating to the practices and philosophies of Crowley’s religion, Thelema. Additionally, Crowley also authored many full-length books on the…
Biblio Mysteries
Mystery fiction has many subgenres: hard-boiled, cozy, police procedural, etc. One particular subgenre of interest to lovers of books is that of the bibliomystery. As the name suggests, bibliomysteries are mysteries which deal in some significant way with books and the world associated with books. A bibliomystery may deal with the theft of a rare book, the murder of a bookdealer, or underhanded dealings inside a publishing firm. The key is that the connection to…
Bob Dylan - Nobel Prize Winner
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner was announced today in Sweden. The surprise winner is 75 year old American musician Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Bob Dylan is not the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is given for a lifetime of writing rather than for a single work. American novelist Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in…
2014: Uncommonly Good Books Sold This Year
2014 has been an amazing year for Biblio.com, our booksellers, and our happy collectors, all! The collectible book trends that we’ve seen this year include a sharp increase in sales of Modern First Editions. There’s been quite a few purchases of signed editions from Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler, John Updike, and Douglas Adams. Books by current authors like Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, JK Rowling, and George R. R. Martin books have…
Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and ’70s was an explosive time in American history, and it inspired explosive literature. Several genres of writing came together to form an undeniable literary movement that many argue was sparked by the Harlem Renaissance decades earlier. Of course, some of the most famous and influential writers of the Civil Rights Movement include Martin Luther King, Jr. and Langston Hughes. Their works, such as Where Do We Go…
Classic Supernatural Fiction
Classic supernatural fiction is distinct from contemporary horror because it is more literate and often relies upon poetic subtlety rather than unpleasant gratuity to create atmosphere. This is one reason why it is highly collectible by connoisseurs of obscure literature. Most collectors are aware of such seminal if no-longer-read gothic classics such as Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), Frankenstein (1818) and The Castle Of Otranto (1765). However, the most important writers of supernatural fiction were Edgar…
Collectible Christmas Cards
Many religious and cultural traditions celebrate special days during the winter holiday season. Although there are differences between them, there is a common thread among them encouraging you to reach out to loved ones to extend warm greetings and affection. For many these days, this looks like an avalanche of glittered cards that clutter up an end table or mantelpiece until they are tossed into the trash after New Year’s Day. Christmas cards are quite…
RIP (Please) George Romero: Modern Master of Zombie Horror
Zombies have been an incredibly popular trope in American cinema, books, and beyond, and most of that is the fault of George Romero. Romero directed the film Night of the Living Dead and co-wrote the screenplay with John Russo. The 1968 film was his first film, and it was a box office hit! Although it was mostly criticized for being too gory, it also made waves in American culture because it starred a black man…
Harlem Renaissance
One of the most influential cultural revolutions in American history, the Harlem Renaissance transformed the landscape for African American art, particularly African American literature. The Harlem Renaissance began in the 1920s and 1930s but it has been credited with fueling the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Although the Harlem Renaissance is named for the famous borough in New York City, the art and literature developed all across the United States, from Philadephia…
Books on NYC
As a country girl who was born and raised in the South, I’ve always had a love affair with New York. The architecture, music, art, people, glamour, drama and yes, even the gritty parts of the city are fascinating to me. It’s a city of myths and legends. Gangs. The mafia. Wall Street. Central Park. Tiffany’s. Beats and punks. Jazz. Museums. The subway. This gallery contains some of the best fiction and nonfiction portraying one…
Mary Shelley - Mother of Science Fiction
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein When the tale Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was published anonymously in 1818 it received great acclaim. Many of its readers were convinced that it was the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who penned the novel because he…
May the Fourth be with you - Star Wars collectibles
Star Wars may have begun as a mere movie, but since its premiere in 1977, it has become a Guinness Award-winning mega-media franchise. The epic space-opera series was created by George Lucas and to everyone’s delight and surprise, it quickly became a global pop-culture success that has blown every other science fiction film series out of the skies. So what is this all about? May 4th is celebrated by many lightsaber-wielding, bath-robed fans as Star…