Trying to get more than two collectors, booksellers or auction dealers to agree on a hard and fast definition for antiquarian books is rather like trying to nail jelly to a tree. "Old and/or rare books" is not a good definition, since antiquarian books are not necessarily either in any absolute sense.
Anyone collecting Californiana, for example, probably would consider titles published in California in the 19th century to be old, if not necessarily rare, because books were first printed in California in 1834. Someone would collects German incunabula (published from roughly 1455-1500) probably would disagree:
Someone collecting limited edition fine press books might term such books rare if the total limitation is less than 50 copies. But fine press books usually are highly valued and well preserved by collectors, meaning that most of those 50 copies are likely to survive in good shape over the years. Someone who collects pamphlets or booklets distributed at street demonstrations against some perceived injustice is more likely to have truly rare material, since such ephemera is (1) generally not set aside as a collectible and (2) does not survive the ravages of time as well as a finely printed book:
In short, context is everything when deciding to label a book antiquarian. Assuming a book can properly be called antiquarian, it likely will present the collector with several challenges that generally do not concern someone collecting recently printed, mass-produced books. One of these challenges is foxing, which we will explore in tomorrow's post...
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