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<b>Bonhams:</b> MANDELSHTAM, OSIP. 1891-1938. Autograph Manuscript, 2 pp, [Petersburg,] January 1913, entitled

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Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool - By Michael Stillman Want to see what has really happened to the value of this book? Read on. By Michael Stillman Figuring out the value of a book is probably the most vexing issue facing booksellers and collectors alike. Not that there is any lack of data. Books have been auctioned in the open market for over three centuries. Knowledgeable booksellers have been placing prices on them for at least that long. There is an enormous wealth of information. The problem is that many of these valuations are old. How can we use this enormous body of pricing data when the ravages of inflation and changing taste have made them seemingly meaningless? The answer is to convert these old prices into current values. We need a scale, something akin to what the Consumer Price Index does for a loaf of bread. Such a scale could translate the price a bookseller or auction placed on that book years ago into today's dollars. It would bring those old prices up to date. Now updated prices would not necessarily establish current value. Some books will have appreciated more than others in the intervening years. Nevertheless, it would tell you on average what that old price equals today. It will tell you the value that bookseller or auction placed on your book. In a world where accurate pricing information is very hard to find, this would be a major step. At the AE, we have been compiling an enormous database (the AE Bibliographic Database) of priced records, primarily from auctions and top booksellers of many generations. Now approaching a million strong, and growing rapidly by the day, these records give us a unique window into book pricing over the past century. Now we have sorted and selected through these reams of data to generate a scale that reflects the yearly trends in book pricing. So far, the scale takes us back to 1914, but in time it will go even farther. Once the scale was created, it became possible to apply it back to each individual record to determine what that old price means in terms of today's dollars. "Book dollars," if you will, for this scale is based not on the price of bread but on the price of books. It is, so to speak, the Consumer Price Index of books. As we noted, not all updated prices will reflect current values because of differing rates of appreciation. However, this brings us to a second, and maybe even more important use for these updated prices. The ability to convert old prices into current values will tell you how fast a book is appreciating relative to other books, which is just a polite way of saying whether it has been a good or a poor investment. Think about that. If a book sold for $100 fifty years ago, and sold for $200 yesterday, it's been a terrible investment. Most books have far more than doubled in fifty years. But, if that book sold for the equivalent of $100 in today's "book dollars" fifty years ago, and $200 today, that is a book which is appreciating at twice the normal rate. Converting old prices to current values enables you to see which books are good investments, which are not so good. Now, if your interest in books is strictly for the pleasure they bring you, then you need read no further. If at least part of your motivation in buying books revolves around money, then please continue.
Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool - By Michael Stillman "Current Estimates" show how greatly the first edition of the Book of Mormon has appreciated. Here is an example: suppose a book sold for $5 in 1955. Next, let's imagine that it currently sells for $10. Was this book a good investment? As we just noted, it certainly was not. It has doubled in price, but you don't need a formula to recognize that this is a terrible rate of return for fifty years. But what if today's price is $50? Or $100? Maybe it's $150, or $200. Most people probably have no idea what that $5 translates to today. That's today's quiz, and at the end of this article, we will tell you. Until then, most people will not likely know what this price means, meaning that a wealth of valuable pricing data collected over decades if not centuries is totally worthless to them. But, it no longer needs to be. Now we'll show you an example of a book that is growing far beyond the rate of a typical book. It has been an outstanding investment in the past. No guarantees here, but it looks to be a continued good value for the future. The book is the original 1830 Palmyra, New York, printing of The Book of Mormon. Mormon titles have become very collectible over the years. If you click the image to the left of this column to enlarge it, you will see the growth, not just in actual prices, but in current estimated dollar values as well. From values in terms of current dollars of $1,000-$2,000 in the 1920s and 1930s, more recent sales translate to near or over $10,000. The trend-line for this book is exceptional. On the other hand, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, a 1751 book by Tobias Smollett, has not fared so well. See the image on the next page to see what has happened to it. Of course not all copies are identical, and this will affect price, but the trends here are inescapable and very telling. I know now which books I want to collect. Some of you may not see a need for this resource. Many people determine values from Abe, Alibris, Biblio and the like. These online book sites are wonderful places for buying and selling books. They are terribly misleading for establishing value. Prices are all over the place. One bookseller may want $10 for a book, another $100 for a similar copy. What does this tell us about its value? A site like Abe has some knowledgeable bookseller members, but it also has a great many amateurs whose prices are pulled out of thin air. Here's another thing to remember about Abe et al. While some of those prices may appear cause for optimism, at least for the seller, what you are mostly seeing are the prices of books that don't sell. The ones whose prices truly reflect the market don't hang around forever. The majority of what you see is books that have been there for ages, often many years. These are essentially the prices people won't pay. They tell the seller how to price books they don't want to sell; the buyer what to pay if they want to be financially underwater for years to come.
Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool - By Michael Stillman While actual prices have inched forward, the comparative value of Peregrine Pickle has tumbled. That's not to say that these sites cannot be at all helpful as pricing guides. For one, the lowest price offered will, in most cases, tell you the upper end of market value. It just stands to reason. If someone is willing to sell for that price, but there are no takers, the market is certainly not higher. The exception would be if the book sells quickly, indicating it might have been underpriced. If it hangs around for long, the market price may be lower, but it almost certainly isn't higher. The online sites are most useful for inexpensive material. They can tell you something if one book has a low price of $1, versus $10 or $20 for another. Books in this price range are unlikely to have been valuable enough to have made it to auction or most booksellers' catalogues anyway, so this is probably the only pricing information available. However, when it comes to rarer and more valuable items, online pricing swings wildly and incoherently, and you are more likely to make wrong decisions than right ones based on bad information. Garbage in... This new pricing tool is now available to all subscribers of the AE Bibliographic Database. This database includes hundreds of thousands of priced historical records, along with continually updated listings from virtually all major worldwide book auctions to provide current pricing. The pricing charts you see with this article can be created for any title in the database with the click of a button. While we can't quite offer the AE Database for free, the price remains surprisingly cheap. It was a remarkably good value for all of the information it provides even before the addition of this pricing tool. The added price for including this tool is zero, and all current subscribers will gain immediate access with no additional charge. The database and pricing tool come with all paid memberships, even the least expensive level (Research) or the one-week trial (Visitor). To see the pricing or to sign up, go to www.americanaexchange.com/NewAE/registration/becomeamember.asp. And now to answer our quiz: the average book which sold for $5 in 1955 will sell for around $135 today. Books have almost always outperformed the Consumer Price Index, except for brief periods when prices temporarily receded. Comparison to the stock market is more interesting. For books/stocks purchased and held until the present, using the Dow Jones Industrial Average for comparison, the 1950s and 1960s were stronger for purchasing books, partly because a soft book market in the early 1950s held prices down. However, the long decline and stagnation of the stock market in the 1970s made stocks the better investment on average starting around the middle of that decade. The advantage did not swing back to books until the late 1990s, when the "bubble" led stocks to climb to unsustainable levels.

Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool

- By Michael Stillman

Want to see what has really happened to the value of this book? Read on.

By Michael Stillman

Figuring out the value of a book is probably the most vexing issue facing booksellers and collectors alike. Not that there is any lack of data. Books have been auctioned in the open market for over three centuries. Knowledgeable booksellers have been placing prices on them for at least that long. There is an enormous wealth of information. The problem is that many of these valuations are old. How can we use this enormous body of pricing data when the ravages of inflation and changing taste have made them seemingly meaningless?

The answer is to convert these old prices into current values. We need a scale, something akin to what the Consumer Price Index does for a loaf of bread. Such a scale could translate the price a bookseller or auction placed on that book years ago into today's dollars. It would bring those old prices up to date. Now updated prices would not necessarily establish current value. Some books will have appreciated more than others in the intervening years. Nevertheless, it would tell you on average what that old price equals today. It will tell you the value that bookseller or auction placed on your book. In a world where accurate pricing information is very hard to find, this would be a major step.

At the AE, we have been compiling an enormous database (the AE Bibliographic Database) of priced records, primarily from auctions and top booksellers of many generations. Now approaching a million strong, and growing rapidly by the day, these records give us a unique window into book pricing over the past century. Now we have sorted and selected through these reams of data to generate a scale that reflects the yearly trends in book pricing. So far, the scale takes us back to 1914, but in time it will go even farther. Once the scale was created, it became possible to apply it back to each individual record to determine what that old price means in terms of today's dollars. "Book dollars," if you will, for this scale is based not on the price of bread but on the price of books. It is, so to speak, the Consumer Price Index of books.

As we noted, not all updated prices will reflect current values because of differing rates of appreciation. However, this brings us to a second, and maybe even more important use for these updated prices. The ability to convert old prices into current values will tell you how fast a book is appreciating relative to other books, which is just a polite way of saying whether it has been a good or a poor investment. Think about that. If a book sold for $100 fifty years ago, and sold for $200 yesterday, it's been a terrible investment. Most books have far more than doubled in fifty years. But, if that book sold for the equivalent of $100 in today's "book dollars" fifty years ago, and $200 today, that is a book which is appreciating at twice the normal rate. Converting old prices to current values enables you to see which books are good investments, which are not so good. Now, if your interest in books is strictly for the pleasure they bring you, then you need read no further. If at least part of your motivation in buying books revolves around money, then please continue.

Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool

- By Michael Stillman

"Current Estimates" show how greatly the first edition of the Book of Mormon has appreciated.

Here is an example: suppose a book sold for $5 in 1955. Next, let's imagine that it currently sells for $10. Was this book a good investment? As we just noted, it certainly was not. It has doubled in price, but you don't need a formula to recognize that this is a terrible rate of return for fifty years. But what if today's price is $50? Or $100? Maybe it's $150, or $200. Most people probably have no idea what that $5 translates to today. That's today's quiz, and at the end of this article, we will tell you. Until then, most people will not likely know what this price means, meaning that a wealth of valuable pricing data collected over decades if not centuries is totally worthless to them. But, it no longer needs to be.

Now we'll show you an example of a book that is growing far beyond the rate of a typical book. It has been an outstanding investment in the past. No guarantees here, but it looks to be a continued good value for the future. The book is the original 1830 Palmyra, New York, printing of The Book of Mormon. Mormon titles have become very collectible over the years. If you click the image to the left of this column to enlarge it, you will see the growth, not just in actual prices, but in current estimated dollar values as well. From values in terms of current dollars of $1,000-$2,000 in the 1920s and 1930s, more recent sales translate to near or over $10,000. The trend-line for this book is exceptional. On the other hand, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, a 1751 book by Tobias Smollett, has not fared so well. See the image on the next page to see what has happened to it. Of course not all copies are identical, and this will affect price, but the trends here are inescapable and very telling. I know now which books I want to collect.

Some of you may not see a need for this resource. Many people determine values from Abe, Alibris, Biblio and the like. These online book sites are wonderful places for buying and selling books. They are terribly misleading for establishing value. Prices are all over the place. One bookseller may want $10 for a book, another $100 for a similar copy. What does this tell us about its value? A site like Abe has some knowledgeable bookseller members, but it also has a great many amateurs whose prices are pulled out of thin air. Here's another thing to remember about Abe et al. While some of those prices may appear cause for optimism, at least for the seller, what you are mostly seeing are the prices of books that don't sell. The ones whose prices truly reflect the market don't hang around forever. The majority of what you see is books that have been there for ages, often many years. These are essentially the prices people won't pay. They tell the seller how to price books they don't want to sell; the buyer what to pay if they want to be financially underwater for years to come.

Converting Old Prices To Current Value: Finally A Tool

- By Michael Stillman

While actual prices have inched forward, the comparative value of Peregrine Pickle has tumbled.

That's not to say that these sites cannot be at all helpful as pricing guides. For one, the lowest price offered will, in most cases, tell you the upper end of market value. It just stands to reason. If someone is willing to sell for that price, but there are no takers, the market is certainly not higher. The exception would be if the book sells quickly, indicating it might have been underpriced. If it hangs around for long, the market price may be lower, but it almost certainly isn't higher.

The online sites are most useful for inexpensive material. They can tell you something if one book has a low price of $1, versus $10 or $20 for another. Books in this price range are unlikely to have been valuable enough to have made it to auction or most booksellers' catalogues anyway, so this is probably the only pricing information available. However, when it comes to rarer and more valuable items, online pricing swings wildly and incoherently, and you are more likely to make wrong decisions than right ones based on bad information. Garbage in...

This new pricing tool is now available to all subscribers of the AE Bibliographic Database. This database includes hundreds of thousands of priced historical records, along with continually updated listings from virtually all major worldwide book auctions to provide current pricing. The pricing charts you see with this article can be created for any title in the database with the click of a button. While we can't quite offer the AE Database for free, the price remains surprisingly cheap. It was a remarkably good value for all of the information it provides even before the addition of this pricing tool. The added price for including this tool is zero, and all current subscribers will gain immediate access with no additional charge. The database and pricing tool come with all paid memberships, even the least expensive level (Research) or the one-week trial (Visitor). To see the pricing or to sign up, go to www.americanaexchange.com/NewAE/registration/becomeamember.asp.

And now to answer our quiz: the average book which sold for $5 in 1955 will sell for around $135 today. Books have almost always outperformed the Consumer Price Index, except for brief periods when prices temporarily receded. Comparison to the stock market is more interesting. For books/stocks purchased and held until the present, using the Dow Jones Industrial Average for comparison, the 1950s and 1960s were stronger for purchasing books, partly because a soft book market in the early 1950s held prices down. However, the long decline and stagnation of the stock market in the 1970s made stocks the better investment on average starting around the middle of that decade. The advantage did not swing back to books until the late 1990s, when the "bubble" led stocks to climb to unsustainable levels.