It's "fine" with me...

"Jbrodie1750" wrote in message
...
Does a dj from the 1940's need to look as "fine" as a "fine" dj from
last
year to be described as "fine." ? Or to phrase the question differently:
can one describe older books a bit less stringently than newer ones?

Can you? Sure.
Should you. No.

--
Bob Finnan
The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page
http://www.Hardy-Boys.net
New & Out Of Print Books, Books-On-Tape, Videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs For Sale
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon/hbsale.htm
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.................................................. ....................

Ahearns book seems to indicate that books from 1949 and earlier do not need
to have the brightness and freshness in the jacket to earn the "fine"
designation. Very few if any books from that period would be fine if they
still had to be as bright as the day issued, but obviously such books would
still have to be basically free of tears, edge wear or any type of chipping
or soiling or sunning. Personally when I have something like that I
usually use either VG+ or Nearfine, as today almost no one trusts the term
"fine" and very few books even published recently deserve the term.

Otherwise get a digital camera.

Randy

--
"Jbrodie1750" wrote in message
...


Does a dj from the 1940's need to look as "fine" as a "fine" dj from
last
year to be described as "fine." ? Or to phrase the question
differently:
can one describe older books a bit less stringently than newer ones?


As in "Good For its Age" you mean? Unfortunately not.

Not even in cases where the book is "Extremely Rare".

Randy Burns wrote:

Ahearns book seems to indicate that books from 1949 and earlier do
not need to have the brightness and freshness in the jacket to earn
the "fine"designation. Very few if any books from that period would
be fine if they still had to be as bright as the day issued, but obviously
such books would still have to be basically free of tears, edge wear or
any type of chipping or soiling or sunning. Personally when I have
something like that I usually use either VG+ or Nearfine, as today
almost no one trusts the term "fine" and very few books even
published recently deserve the term.

Otherwise get a digital camera.

Basically, I agree. There has to be some kind of reality check here, and
books which are perhaps several hundred years old are inevitably going to
show signs of age. Even an ABAA trader can get drawn into the "fine
condition for its age" kind of remark, as I just pointed out in another
thread ("A Guide to Rare Books" http://tinyurl.com/kjfm; see number 5).
Michael Adams rightly points out that this is not really acceptable and,
while I can see why, in a case where - well - it is actually *true*, a
dealer would be tempted to use it, it sounds so unprofessional it's really a
kind of kiss of death.

It would be better to say something like, "Apart from slight rubbing to the
spine and boards, and a professional repair to one leaf, this copy is
virtually flawless - tightly bound and with none of the foxing, staining,
marginal scribblings and other faults which are so often found in books of
this period." Describing the flaws a book *doesn't* have can be a very
useful way of getting the message across!

Even so, a few shots with a digital camera can say more than any
description. This is one of the few advantages of eBay over ABE, which
doesn't have provision for pictures of sufficient *quality*, though one can
always contact the seller directly and ask for such pictures to be sent. I'm
not talking about the hazy pictures some eBay sellers use, but ones of
sufficient clarity to be able to read the text without squinting, taken by
someone of sufficient honesty to make it clear what the true condition is.
Here's an example, from a recently finished auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3543313746.
My only slight criticism is that several of the pictures cut off the page
border. To be perfect, the picture would show the *complete* page, but in
this case the seller has taken enough pains to highlight flaws (both in the
pictures and in the written description) that I don't suspect any hidden
flaws lurking just out of the camera's range.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com