High Spot books are the ones you want to sell...!
I consider these to be used books selling at fifty dollars and up.
I've sent a few high spots out this week... One a cookbook.... Joy of Cooking 1946 printing...in a DJ with a few chips to the top and bottom but fully intact otherwise...
Another high spot was a very hard to find book on James Strang the Mormon apostate who colonized Beaver Island in Michigan in the mid 1800's...
Some books on "repair and maintainance" of rather exotic equipment command high prices... I sold a book on "How to Repair Spinning Wheels" for $100++ recently.
Stated First Printings of very famous books, like "Silent Spring," are easy to sell at good prices. I did sell that title for several hundred a while back.
An early Steinberg cartoon collection was listed over $100 recently.
Art and Photography books are worth looking at...especially large books about older edgy blockbuster exhibits from the past.
Also retrospectives of artists who are well know to the art community, but who don't command such great public attention that their exhibition catalogs are printed in huge quantities...
In other words...NOT Andy Warhol...but perhaps some lesser know German Expressionist... Get the picture...?
I sold a book called "Banana Splits" recently...it's an avante garde photoraphy book...
When I first got the book I listed it immediately on Amazon at a "guessed at" price...
Then I went to Addall to check on what the book was really "going for"...and noticed that the only book available was mine! Globally...!
Anyway, eventually the book sold to some guy in Hollywood...then I checked back on Addall to see if any more copies had been listed...and there was one other...in London...going for $700+...!! And I let my copy go for $150...
Well, I have my money on that deal...and that guy in London is still holding on to his book...!
Some of the older books by Presidential candidates can attrach a following...
For example, Robert Kennedy's "To Seek a New World" still sells for over $50 in jacket. Herbert Humphrey's 1964 Book: "Beyond Civil Rights" has a higher price in nice jacket.
Some odd and out of print geneological material is very pricey....
Some vintage "True Crime" can sell for big bucks...if they are long out of print...and someone still remembers the incident.
True Crime is really a sleeper catagory for some bookdealers...it's exciting for many people to read about crimes...
And this translate into their willingness to pay the price to get these long out of print books.
The problem with High Spots is that often you can't tell that they are High Spots just by looking at them...
Some books seem to have a "cult following" and therefore command high prices...
Some fairly recent books about certain Rock Bands are very high priced....others just about average.
It really depends on the size of the printings...and how long the book stayed in print.
What is needed to be a High Spot is reasonably strong demand...usually from a small "cult" of people who are seeking the book...for whatever reason.
But NOT so much demand that the publisher will put out another printing...or bring to book back into print...!
As long as the book stays out of print...and the demand is higher than the supply available...?
Book buyers will bid up these out of print books to High Spot status...and booksellers will make money...
IF they can find these high demand...low supply books....
