BookFinder Lists The Top 100 Most Sought After Out-of-Print Books
- by Michael Stillman
Madonna is also a famous singer.
BookFinder.com has released its annual report of the top 100 most sought after books on its book metasearch site. As a metasearch site, BookFinder searches multiple listing sites, such as AbeBooks, Alibris, and Amazon, and aggregates their results. What type of books do people generally search BookFinder for? Not new ones, as these are primarily old book sites. Nor are people likely to go to an aggregator to find what is common. The books on this list are likely to combine desirability with difficulty to find, which leads people to a search engine that searches many sites at once.
That said, we will proceed to the list of the most sought after hard-to-find, out-of-print books. Many of these are truly niche publications, the type of books not likely to have been printed in large numbers, but highly desirable to a select few. For example, at the end of the list, #100 is the fascinating sounding Basic Building Data: 10,000 Timeless Construction Facts. Try reading that cover to cover. Then there is #88, VLF Radio Engineering. Do you know what VLF radio is? I do, but only because I looked it up - very low frequency. It is used for communication with submarines that are near the surface. #87 is the ever-popular Chemical and Determinative Tables of Mineralogy. I won't even attempt to explain that.
Some books sound very weighty, such as #63, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495-1975. Others are light and fluffy, such as #58, Pancakes A to Z. Pogo, the comic strip best noted for the quote, "we have met the enemy and he is us," has been out of syndication for 35 years, but evidently the swamp possum still has his fans as #41 is I Go Pogo. Carl Sagan has been gone fifteen years (hard to believe), but he too remains popular, with #15 being his Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record.
Now, we go to the most sought after of all, the BookFinder Top Ten.
10. Mandingo, by Kyle Onstott. This 1950s novel about sex, violence and exploitation in the slaveholding, antebellum South would become a successful exploitation film in the 1970s.
9. Arithmetic Progress Papers, by H. Henry Thomas. Can't find much about this one, other than Thomas was an Englishman who wrote several "Progress Reports" going back to the 1950s. If anyone knows why this one is desirable, please post it at the end of this article.
8. Marilyn: A Biography, by Norman Mailer. Fifty years later and still all we need is her first name to know who this is.
7. Man in Black, by Johnny Cash. This one is rising up the charts with a bullet, all the way from #100 last year, as well it should for this legendary country singer.
6. Codex Seraphinianus, by Luigi Serafini. This is a creative though strange work, a "serious" illustrated book about a fantasy world written in an internally correct but incomprehensible tongue.
5. In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting, by Ray Garton. This "true" story is also true fantasy, but author Garton was obliged to treat this account relayed to him by residents of a "haunted" house as if it were real, though not even he believed it.
4. My Pretty Pony, by Stephen King. This is a short story published in a relatively small number for something by the immensely popular King.
3. Rage, by Richard Bachman. No, this is not Michele's husband. Stephen King, by any name, is very popular. Bachman was an early pseudonym used by King.
2. Promise Me Tomorrow, by Nora Roberts. This one is apparently so bad that not even the prolific Roberts likes it, so she has refused to let it be reprinted. So, as if there aren't enough other Roberts books to choose from, everyone wants this one.
1. Sex, by Madonna. What always sells? Year after year, this 1992 limited edition pictorial essay of the pop songstress in varying stages of undress tops the list. She may not be on the top of the Billboard charts any more, but Madonna continues to rule the BookFinder top 100.
High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Penline Flourishes.
High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Cents and Pound Signs.
High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Wooden type cabinet 27” w by 19” d by 38” h.
ALDE, Dec. 11: ALBINUS (BERNHARD SIEGFIED). Tabulæ Sceleti et Musculorum corporis humanum, Londres, 1749. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: BIDLOO (GOVARD). Anatomia humani corporis. Centum et quinque tabulis per artificiosiss. G. de Lairesse..., Amsterdam, 1685.
ALDE, Dec. 11: BOURGERY (JEAN-MARC) – JACOB (NICOLAS-HENRI). Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’Homme comprenant la médecine opératoire, Paris, 1832. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: CALDANI (LEOPOLDO MARCANTONIO ET FLORIANO). Icones anatomicae, Venice, 1801-14. €5,000 to €6,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: CARSWELL (ROBERT). Pathological Anatomy. Illustrations of the elementary forms of disease, London, 1838. €5,000 to €6,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: CASSERIUS (JULIUS) [GIULIO CASSERIO]. De vocis auditusq. organis historia anatomica singulari fide methodo ac industria concinnata tractatis duobus explicate, Ferrara, 1600-1601. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: ESTIENNE (CHARLES). De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. €8,000 to €10,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: GAMELIN (JACQUES). Nouveau Recueil d'Ostéologie et de Myologie dessiné d'après nature... pour l’utilité des sciences et des arts, divisé en deux parties, Toulouse, 1779. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: ROESSLIN (EUCHER). Des divers travaux et enfantemens des femmes et par quel moyen l'on doit survenir aux accidens…, Paris, 1536. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: VALVERDE (JUAN DE). Anatome corporis humani. Nunc primum a Michaele Michaele Columbo latine reddita, et additis novis aliquot tabulis exornata, Venetiis, 1589. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Dec. 11: VESALIUS (ANDREAS). De humani Corporis Fabrica libri septem, Venetiis, 1568. €3,000 to €4,000.
Sotheby's Fine Books, Manuscripts & More Available for Immediate Purchase
Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 11,135 USD
Sotheby’s: Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. 33,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Leo Tolstoy, Clara Bow. War and Peace, 1886. 22,500 USD
Sotheby’s: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1902. 7,500 USD
Sotheby’s: F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Others, 1920-1941. 24,180 USD
Doyle, Dec. 5: Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973). Yawning Tiger, conceived 1917. $3,000 to $5,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert M. Kulicke (1924-2007). Full-Blown Red and White Roses in a Glass Vase, 1982. $3,000 to $5,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). L’ATELIER DE CANNES (Bloch 794; Mourlot 279). The cover for Ces Peintres Nos Amis, vol. II. $1,000 to $1,500.
Doyle, Dec. 5: LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). THE BEACH AT CANNES, 1979. $1,200 to $1,800.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Richard Avendon, the suite of eleven signed portraits from the Avedon/Paris portfolio. $150,000 to $250,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Flowers in Vase, 1985. $20,000 to $30,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Nude, 1936. $20,000 to $30,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Juniper, High Sierra, 1937.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven J. Levn (b. 1964). Plumage II, 2011. $6,000 to $8,000.
Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven Meisel (b. 1954). Madonna, Miami, (from Sex), 1992. $6,000 to $9,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: An extensive archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories. $60,000 to $80,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: RAND, AYN. Single page from Ayn Rand’s handwritten first draft of her influential final novel Atlas Shrugged. $30,000 to $50,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: Ernest Hemingway’s first book with interesting provenance. Three Stories & Ten Poems. $20,000 to $30,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: Hemingway’s second book, one of 170 copies. In Our Time. $15,000 to $25,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: A finely colored example of Visscher’s double hemisphere world map, with a figured border. $12,000 to $18,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter. $10,000 to $20,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: Antonio Ordóñez's “Suit of Lights” owned by Ernest Hemingway. $10,000 to $20,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: A remarkable Truman archive featuring an inscribed beam from the White House construction. $8,000 to $12,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: The fourth edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America. $8,000 to $12,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: The original typed manuscript for Chandler’s only opera. The Princess and the Pedlar: An Entirely Original Comic Opera. $8,000 to $12,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: A splendidly illustrated treatise on ancient Peru and its Incan civilization. $7,000 to $10,000.
Doyle, Dec. 6: A superb copy of Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis from Longleat House. $5,000 to $8,000.