FAO Buenchico

[mycatis]

after reading the thred below about first editions, I noticed that you seemed to know a thing or two about books :-) Do you have any suggestions for where I can find out the value of a book I have? It's called
"And to my nephew Albert I leave the island what I won of Fatty Hagan in a poker game" (isnt that a great title lol) and it is a first edition (apparently) I mentioned it on here before. Any ideas? thanks Cat x

[gary baldy]

'Sorry Chris cant come to the phone right now....."

In his absense look here:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&am p;y=17&tn=and+to+my+nephew+albert&x=87&sortb y=3

worth quite a bit apparently.
Chris knows everything about everything not just books so we are glad to have him really arent we?

[Buenchico]

I see that my answering service has already taken your call!

Gary's gone straight to the site which I would also have used as my first point of reference. The problem with assigning a price to a book is that it's only worth as much as someone is willing to pay. Although one dealer seems to think that he might be able to get �60 for a first edition, I suspect that he might have to wait a very long tme for a sale. This is because 'David Forrest' isn't a very collectable author. In fact he doesn't even exist. It's a pen name used by a partnership of two authors.

My guess is that the dealer offering that book will wait a year or two, to see if anyone buys it at that price, before trying to sell it at a book fair for a more realistic price of, say, �40. If you were to offer him (or another dealer) your copy, you'd probably only get �10 - �15 for it. (Book dealers rarely pay more than a quarter of their projected sale price for stock items).

Chris

PS: I'll now go and amend the message on my answering machine, so that it says "Sorry I can't take your call. Please ring Gary Baldy" :-)

[jno]

wikipedia thinks he fetches high prices. But it's as Buenchico says: he only fetches the prices someone wants to pay. If you find a buyer who's just been waiting for that one book to complete a set, and he's desperate to beat a lot of other buyers to it, you're in luck. Otherwise, maybe not.

[mycatis]

thanks folks, to be honest I was just curious. I dont want to sell it cause I love the book and spent ages trying to find a copy. Just being nosy! lol