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SpanishHow exciting to investors could the introduction of a mutual fund that invests solely in rare books be? Before you rule that everything about it is controversial, consider this: The mutual fund industry has embraced alternative investing 1 sixty plus years later from the time that Harry Markowitz conducted his breakthrough research on portfolio theory based […]
Rare Book Sale Monitor
In the midst of the Greece crisis reaching yet another boiling point, the RBSM recorded little or no change in ancient, classical Greek authors’ works covering history, science, geography, philosophy and literature. It has definitely not been the type of economic event with significant impact on antiquarian books. The supply of ancient Greek books got […]
Up until recent times, financial advisors have been reluctant to recommend “alternative” types of investments in collectibles, such as rare books, to their customers. Primary concerns circle around the factors of illiquidity, additional costs for storage, insurance, transportation and fraud. The lack of standard quantitative performance measurements comparing the long term returns of financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, […]
The Rare Book Sale Monitor (RBSM) analyzes prices of rare books traded at on-line marketplaces, auctions and various book fairs to report valuation trends by genre and author. The data collection process remained relatively static since the original collection was built back in 2011. The RBSM engine, however, has undergone several improvements in order to […]
The April 2012 article titled “Adam Smith’s Classic of Modern Economic Thought,” articulated the difficulty in tracking price changes in rare books that exhibit limited transactional activity. The Rare Book Sale Monitor, which tracks monthly sales from multiple channels and compares them to historic quarterly pricing in order to report on significant shifts in pricing […]
As every statistician or analytics professional in today’s environment can affirm, collecting the information is crucial, but not enough, since most of data’s value lies in its use. While information is getting increasingly complex and there is certainly more of it, technology is actually helping unearth some of the insights hidden in the raw data […]
During the last quarter, current political events had an impact on book sales of certain genre relative to a particular topic. A number of rare book journals and organizations reported that sales for George Orwell’s classic 1984, for instance, have skyrocketed in the wake of the National Security Agency scandal. 1984 makes a good summer […]
Much of what we do here at Rarebooksdigest.com is discovering rare books, and the stories that accompany them. These stories can pertain to the written pages, the outside covers of the books, or even to the people who cherished them. For much else, however, we are in debt to our superior scholars and booksellers, whose […]
Even before posting our feature on the “The Poor Man’s Bible” last April and, more recently, “The priceless Gutenberg Bible” in September, the excitement surrounding rare religious books and, more specifically, old Bibles was on the rise. Collectors are increasingly pouring large sums of cash into ancient religious texts. The Rare Book Sale Monitor (RBSM) recorded […]
As the world excitedly anticipates the completion of the long awaited for film, The Hobbit, ample credit towards the remarkable rare book whose story inspired the film is certainly due. While the book is not only a classic favorite in rare book literature, it is also significantly valuable in the rare book market, which […]
