What is this book set worth?

Does anyone know what:

Handbuch der Astronomischen Instrumentenkunde, L. Ambronn, 1899
(2 Volumes)

is worth?

I have never seen it for sale on line.

David

David S. Maddison wrote:

Does anyone know what:

Handbuch der Astronomischen Instrumentenkunde, L. Ambronn, 1899
(2 Volumes)

is worth?

I have never seen it for sale on line.

(Some of the following may be of the teaching grandmothers to suck eggs
variety, but since I don't know where you're coming from I'll just start
from scratch.)

You'll probably think I'm being flippant if I tell you that, if you're
trying to sell it, it's worth whatever you can get for it, and if you're
trying to buy it it's worth whatever you're prepared to pay for it, but such
nevertheless is the case. Even if you did find a copy offered for sale
online it would not necessarily tell you what it was worth, only what one
particular dealer was *asking* for it. If you found the record of a sale
that would get you a bit closer to what it was worth - it would at least
tell you that it was worth that much to a particular seller and a particular
buyer at a particular time.

Having said that, a search of the Karlsruhe metacatalogue of library
collections (http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html) turns up
only one copy in Berlin and one copy in Bayern (possibly a reprint; it has
the same publisher but there is no date given and no mention of it being in
two volumes). There are doubtless a few other copies around, but it is
evidently quite scarce.

Scarcity, though, is not necessarily a guide to value. Most books go through
only one edition, generate little interest and fall into oblivion. They may
subsequently gain value through extreme age, or because they deal with a
subject of scholarly interest, etc., but scarcity in itself is no guarantee
of value.

The fact that it is in short *supply* is of no real consequence if it is not
in *demand* so, having established its scarcity the next step is to find out
whether there are people who might want it enough to pay a decent price for
it.

Google can help here. If there are references to Ambronn's work in scholarly
papers, etc., they may show up in a google search, and that will at least
show that his work is on the map, and may be of interest to specialists in
the field.

In this case, google comes up trumps. There are only a few references, but
they are encouraging. In particular, there is a short biography of Ambronn
at http://www.plicht.de/chris/files/a/a...dfriedrich.htm, which
describes the work in question as "still valuable and much sought after". So
we know it's scarce, and now we know at least *someone* reckons it's in
demand.

Google also turns up someone with the e-mail address ,
who has a copy of volume two and is looking for a copy of volume one
(http://www.trussel.com/books/sets_h.htm). You could perhaps get in touch
with this person, who may perhaps have an idea of the going price.
(Curiously enough, I may have had recent dealings with this person in a not
wholly unrelated context, though the e-mail address is different.)

Another way to attempt to establish what economic value you might want to
attach to this book would be to track down other works by this writer and
other works in the same field and see what kinds of prices they fetch. For
example, a quick search on ABE, based on a list at
http://www.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.d...b/buch/ai.html, turned up a copy
of Nicolaus von Konkoly, Praktische Anleitung (1883), at $277.75, but you'd
need to look at many more examples and check other sales catalogues, such as
the ZVAB catalogue (http://www.zvab.com), where the Konkoly book is also
listed, with a description in English, which you may find useful. The ZVAB
catalogue also has another work by Ambronn, dated 1911, and priced at only 8
euros, but that's probably not much help; it isn't listed as a significant
work on the biographical site I mentioned above.

You would probably also, in the course of such enquiries, turn up specialist
dealers and, maybe, specialist collectors whom you could approach directly.
Of course, one such may respond to your posting; I'm just throwing in my two
pennies' worth in case no one else does.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

In article , "John
Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote:

David S. Maddison wrote:

Does anyone know what:

Handbuch der Astronomischen Instrumentenkunde, L. Ambronn, 1899
(2 Volumes)

is worth?

I have never seen it for sale on line.

(Some of the following may be of the teaching grandmothers to suck eggs
variety, but since I don't know where you're coming from I'll just start
from scratch.)

You'll probably think I'm being flippant if I tell you that, if you're
trying to sell it, it's worth whatever you can get for it, and if you're
trying to buy it it's worth whatever you're prepared to pay for it, but such
nevertheless is the case. Even if you did find a copy offered for sale
online it would not necessarily tell you what it was worth, only what one
particular dealer was *asking* for it. If you found the record of a sale
that would get you a bit closer to what it was worth - it would at least
tell you that it was worth that much to a particular seller and a particular
buyer at a particular time.

Having said that, a search of the Karlsruhe metacatalogue of library
collections (http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html) turns up
only one copy in Berlin and one copy in Bayern (possibly a reprint; it has
the same publisher but there is no date given and no mention of it being in
two volumes). There are doubtless a few other copies around, but it is
evidently quite scarce.

Scarcity, though, is not necessarily a guide to value. Most books go through
only one edition, generate little interest and fall into oblivion. They may
subsequently gain value through extreme age, or because they deal with a
subject of scholarly interest, etc., but scarcity in itself is no guarantee
of value.

The fact that it is in short *supply* is of no real consequence if it is not
in *demand* so, having established its scarcity the next step is to find out
whether there are people who might want it enough to pay a decent price for
it.

Google can help here. If there are references to Ambronn's work in scholarly
papers, etc., they may show up in a google search, and that will at least
show that his work is on the map, and may be of interest to specialists in
the field.

In this case, google comes up trumps. There are only a few references, but
they are encouraging. In particular, there is a short biography of Ambronn
at http://www.plicht.de/chris/files/a/a...dfriedrich.htm, which
describes the work in question as "still valuable and much sought after". So
we know it's scarce, and now we know at least *someone* reckons it's in
demand.

Google also turns up someone with the e-mail address ,
who has a copy of volume two and is looking for a copy of volume one
(http://www.trussel.com/books/sets_h.htm). You could perhaps get in touch
with this person, who may perhaps have an idea of the going price.
(Curiously enough, I may have had recent dealings with this person in a not
wholly unrelated context, though the e-mail address is different.)

Another way to attempt to establish what economic value you might want to
attach to this book would be to track down other works by this writer and
other works in the same field and see what kinds of prices they fetch. For
example, a quick search on ABE, based on a list at
http://www.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.d...b/buch/ai.html, turned up a copy
of Nicolaus von Konkoly, Praktische Anleitung (1883), at $277.75, but you'd
need to look at many more examples and check other sales catalogues, such as
the ZVAB catalogue (http://www.zvab.com), where the Konkoly book is also
listed, with a description in English, which you may find useful. The ZVAB
catalogue also has another work by Ambronn, dated 1911, and priced at only 8
euros, but that's probably not much help; it isn't listed as a significant
work on the biographical site I mentioned above.

You would probably also, in the course of such enquiries, turn up specialist
dealers and, maybe, specialist collectors whom you could approach directly.
Of course, one such may respond to your posting; I'm just throwing in my two
pennies' worth in case no one else does.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

Well I think that's a very good mini-essay on the topic. My first thought
was that for MOST bookstores, it would likely be worth nothing whatsoever,
as the chance of finding a walk-in customer for it approaches zero percent
-- so it's essentially a Goodwill Box item, & when the Goodwill gets it,
even they'd likely put it in the recycle bin as worth only its weight in
recyclable paper (which is the fate of tons & tons of books left at Half
Price Books -- including a lot of old fiction I could've sold easily, but
Half Price doesn't have customers for it -- one vendor's idea of unsalable
junk could be another vendor's goldmine of rarities).

The web leaves open the off chance of selling even stuff on nobody's
wantlist, or on only one person's wantlist who lives on the other side of
the planet. I was once saddled with a dead friend's Russian language
medical texts from the 1920s through 1970s. A lot of this stuff was
autographed by the Russian authors; the books came from the library of an
elderly surgeon whose own books & scientific papers I edited for
publication, & in his youth he'd worked in a St Petersberg hospital so had
all these Russian buddies throughout his life, managing to keep in touch
even during the Cold War, and trading their published works with one
another for decades. But autographed medical books in Russian probably
aren't all that valuable even in Russia where folks could actually read
them; they're dead stock in an English langauge bookstore.

Books with a lot of well-illustrated herpetological studies & genetic
experiments on amphibians I was actually able to sell (cheaply for the
lot) to a herpetology specialist who quadrupled the prices & sold them
slowly over many years. A few others with illustrations of freaks of
nature were also salable (more dearly) for the creepy pictures. But every
attempt to even give the rest of it away failed until it was off to the
Goodwill with what remained, & they no doubt tossed it all out. Perhaps
nowadays they could be put on the web & find a buyer eventually for fifty
to two-hundred dollars a pop because if even one person wanted even one of
the books, they would never find another copy & I could screw them for the
price if I was that sort of character. But I wouldn't count on being able
to sell such stuff even now, neither dirt-cheap nor gouging.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

Nicely done, Paghat.


Francis A. Miniter


paghat wrote:

In article , "John
Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote:



David S. Maddison wrote:



Does anyone know what:

Handbuch der Astronomischen Instrumentenkunde, L. Ambronn, 1899
(2 Volumes)

is worth?

I have never seen it for sale on line.


(Some of the following may be of the teaching grandmothers to suck eggs
variety, but since I don't know where you're coming from I'll just start
from scratch.)

You'll probably think I'm being flippant if I tell you that, if you're
trying to sell it, it's worth whatever you can get for it, and if you're
trying to buy it it's worth whatever you're prepared to pay for it, but such
nevertheless is the case. Even if you did find a copy offered for sale
online it would not necessarily tell you what it was worth, only what one
particular dealer was *asking* for it. If you found the record of a sale
that would get you a bit closer to what it was worth - it would at least
tell you that it was worth that much to a particular seller and a particular
buyer at a particular time.

Having said that, a search of the Karlsruhe metacatalogue of library
collections (http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html) turns up
only one copy in Berlin and one copy in Bayern (possibly a reprint; it has
the same publisher but there is no date given and no mention of it being in
two volumes). There are doubtless a few other copies around, but it is
evidently quite scarce.

Scarcity, though, is not necessarily a guide to value. Most books go through
only one edition, generate little interest and fall into oblivion. They may
subsequently gain value through extreme age, or because they deal with a
subject of scholarly interest, etc., but scarcity in itself is no guarantee
of value.

The fact that it is in short *supply* is of no real consequence if it is not
in *demand* so, having established its scarcity the next step is to find out
whether there are people who might want it enough to pay a decent price for
it.

Google can help here. If there are references to Ambronn's work in scholarly
papers, etc., they may show up in a google search, and that will at least
show that his work is on the map, and may be of interest to specialists in
the field.

In this case, google comes up trumps. There are only a few references, but
they are encouraging. In particular, there is a short biography of Ambronn
at http://www.plicht.de/chris/files/a/a...dfriedrich.htm, which
describes the work in question as "still valuable and much sought after". So
we know it's scarce, and now we know at least *someone* reckons it's in
demand.

Google also turns up someone with the e-mail address ,
who has a copy of volume two and is looking for a copy of volume one
(http://www.trussel.com/books/sets_h.htm). You could perhaps get in touch
with this person, who may perhaps have an idea of the going price.
(Curiously enough, I may have had recent dealings with this person in a not
wholly unrelated context, though the e-mail address is different.)

Another way to attempt to establish what economic value you might want to
attach to this book would be to track down other works by this writer and
other works in the same field and see what kinds of prices they fetch. For
example, a quick search on ABE, based on a list at
http://www.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.d...b/buch/ai.html, turned up a copy
of Nicolaus von Konkoly, Praktische Anleitung (1883), at $277.75, but you'd
need to look at many more examples and check other sales catalogues, such as
the ZVAB catalogue (http://www.zvab.com), where the Konkoly book is also
listed, with a description in English, which you may find useful. The ZVAB
catalogue also has another work by Ambronn, dated 1911, and priced at only 8
euros, but that's probably not much help; it isn't listed as a significant
work on the biographical site I mentioned above.

You would probably also, in the course of such enquiries, turn up specialist
dealers and, maybe, specialist collectors whom you could approach directly.
Of course, one such may respond to your posting; I'm just throwing in my two
pennies' worth in case no one else does.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com



Well I think that's a very good mini-essay on the topic. My first thought
was that for MOST bookstores, it would likely be worth nothing whatsoever,
as the chance of finding a walk-in customer for it approaches zero percent
-- so it's essentially a Goodwill Box item, & when the Goodwill gets it,
even they'd likely put it in the recycle bin as worth only its weight in
recyclable paper (which is the fate of tons & tons of books left at Half
Price Books -- including a lot of old fiction I could've sold easily, but
Half Price doesn't have customers for it -- one vendor's idea of unsalable
junk could be another vendor's goldmine of rarities).

The web leaves open the off chance of selling even stuff on nobody's
wantlist, or on only one person's wantlist who lives on the other side of
the planet. I was once saddled with a dead friend's Russian language
medical texts from the 1920s through 1970s. A lot of this stuff was
autographed by the Russian authors; the books came from the library of an
elderly surgeon whose own books & scientific papers I edited for
publication, & in his youth he'd worked in a St Petersberg hospital so had
all these Russian buddies throughout his life, managing to keep in touch
even during the Cold War, and trading their published works with one
another for decades. But autographed medical books in Russian probably
aren't all that valuable even in Russia where folks could actually read
them; they're dead stock in an English langauge bookstore.

Books with a lot of well-illustrated herpetological studies & genetic
experiments on amphibians I was actually able to sell (cheaply for the
lot) to a herpetology specialist who quadrupled the prices & sold them
slowly over many years. A few others with illustrations of freaks of
nature were also salable (more dearly) for the creepy pictures. But every
attempt to even give the rest of it away failed until it was off to the
Goodwill with what remained, & they no doubt tossed it all out. Perhaps
nowadays they could be put on the web & find a buyer eventually for fifty
to two-hundred dollars a pop because if even one person wanted even one of
the books, they would never find another copy & I could screw them for the
price if I was that sort of character. But I wouldn't count on being able
to sell such stuff even now, neither dirt-cheap nor gouging.

-paghat the ratgirl

Paghat wrote:

My first thought was that for MOST
bookstores, it would likely be worth nothing whatsoever, as the
chance of finding a walk-in customer for it approaches zero percent

Yes, I guess for most people an obscure book in a foreign language is pretty
worthless, but located in Japan as I am, and with the web as my main tool, I
get a lot of fun out of matching up books to the people who will value them,
and walk-in customers don't come into it. Collecting scientific instruments
is quite a field in itself, and there are doubtless people out there who
would jump at a two-volume work on turn-of-the-century astronomic
instruments. The question is whether you can find them, or at least make it
possible for them to find you. If not, then, as you say, such books are
pretty worthless.

Re your Russian books:

autographed medical books in Russian probably
aren't all that valuable even in Russia where folks could actually
read them; they're dead stock in an English langauge bookstore.
[snip]
nowadays they could be put on the web & find a buyer eventually
for fifty to two-hundred dollars a pop because if even one person
wanted even one of the books, they would never find another copy
& I could screw them for the price if I was that sort of character.
But I wouldn't count on being able to sell such stuff even now, .
neither dirt-cheap nor gouging

Russian medical textbooks and a German work on astronomic instruments are
rather different kettles of fish, but surely the sensible approach in both
cases would be neither to gouge nor sell them dirt-cheap, but price them
moderately and leave them in an online catalogue, perhaps with some suitable
keywords (including some in Russian) in your meta-http. Wouldn't that be
better than carting them off to a thrift store you know is only going to
chuck 'em out? At least that way someone who might be happy to get them
would have a chance to do so. (I appreciate this wasn't an option at the
time, but with the advent of the web - and assuming one has somewhere to
store the stuff - that seems the most practicable option nowadays.)

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com