Cleaning out basement and found my deceased father's complete set of a
1954 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Would like to know if
there is any value to these books or not.
Probably not. The last edition of antiquarian value was the 11th of
1910 because the last to publish Victorian scholarly articles unabridged.
Years ago I gave a scholarly paper on the modern (1890) army rifle as
an agent of social change (requiring that soldiers be taught marksmanship
skills as well as obedience, drill etc.) The 11th edition Britannica
has dozens of pages of material (on chemistry, metallurgy, ballistics,
conscription, etc.) relevant to that theme 1815-1914. By contrast
modern editions probably have half a column on the rifle with no history
at all.

The one that blew my mind was the article on the Onychophora (or was
it the Peripatus genus in particular?) - pages and pages of anatomical
diagrams of an animal most people have never heard of and even less
have seen. (My brother had two of them as pets for a while).

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