More Very Expensive Used Books

    My efforts to convince people (especially those who work in libraries) that printed books are still worth some attention, were last displayed in the post about "Very Expensive Used Books." In it, a used copy of Gone With the Wind was reported to have been purchased for $25,000, not a bad price, given that literary critics didn't particularly like it, and now there are many critical of it for other reasons.
   The book above was just sold for $85,620, which is nothing to brag about since another first edition of the same book went for $471,000 in 2021. But, it is interesting that the one just sold was a used library book.

The Weeding of Books
  Librarians are discarding old books for many reasons. In the public libraries, one of them is to make room for the homeless, and in the university close by, it is to make space for students who, I gather, are not much interested in printed books. But, in both the public libraries and the university ones, care should be taken and weeding done with caution. Be more careful than even the gardener.
   The inside of the $85,620 used library book is shown above and reveals that "it was borrowed 27 times between December 15, 1997 and October 12,1999 before it was withdrawn from service." I am not sure what happened after that, but I am pretty sure that the Edinburgh Public Library did not get any of the $85,620.

Sources:

   The Potter book was listed by AbeBooks as one of their "Most Expensive Sales 2023."
The book was sold by First and Fine in Shropshire and information related to its purchase is found here. 

  As the illustration above indicates again, printed books can be valuable even in the United States. It is one of many from Raptis Rare Books in Palm Beach, but I doubt that there have been many shoppers visit it from Mar-a-Lago, close by. 

CANCON:
  As luck would have it, for those trying to make the case for printed books, this showed up on Feb. 17, 2024 in the Vancouver Sun. Dr. Vogrincic buys. "rare old medical books" and he bought this, "personal, annotated copy of Andreas Vesalius’s masterwork on anatomy de Humani Corporis Fabrica, printed in 1555." He paid less than $20,000 Canadian back in 2007. Once he realized the true value of the book, he lent it to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library for safe keeping. 

The book "was purchased by the University of Louvain in Belgium, which Vesalius had attended." It will probably be found in their library.