Customer Reviews

Heritage Press Catalog & Checklist: The Ultimate Book Collector's Resource

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A sorely needed reference source for booksellers and collectors. Is it perfect? No. But it functions extremely well for the purposes for which it was published - primarily as a bibliography and checklist.

Prices for collectible books that are shown in price guides are always iffy, and that's just as true for this guide. At best, price guides for collectible books give some rough idea of value. Using them for valuing a book collection is never a good idea.

I highly recommend this outstanding reference work - but as with ALL price guides for collectible books, the quoted prices must be taken with a dollop of salt.

The only exception to that rule that I can think of is the ABPC (American Book Prices Current), which records the actual auction selling prices of collectible books sold at major book auction houses.

As a marginally serious collector of Heritage and Nonesuch Press (as well as Folio Society, and other limited printers) I was enthused to find a volume like this available to keep tabs on the several hundred Heritage Press books in my collection, along with their accompanying Sandglass pamphlets. I was saddened to find, however, that this book falls far short of its intended use, grouping books strangely and randomly, and with next to nothing regarding the book itself (beyond issuance, and for a few, binding style), and absolutley nothing regarding the coveted Sandglass inserts (which are commonly as entertaining and enlightening as the books they accentuate). Moreover, his cataloging numbers seem to be random, and the descriptions are limited and poor. Perhaps most importantly to the collector, the prices listed appear to be arbitrary and are variously over- and under-estimated for what one might pay not only in an antiquarian booksellers, but even used on Amazon or Ebay. Overall, not a reliable book, nor a good one. If you truly want to collect and price your collection, do a little homework (not here) and see what the books are actually selling for, and in what condition compared to your own.