Collecting Autographed and Inscribed Books

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Erik Bosse. I'm with the Aldredge Bookstore. I'd like to talk about signed and inscribed books. Sometimes a signed book can be something as simple as an author writing their name on the book. Just a simple unadorned autograph. Sometimes it can be a little bit more involved. In this case we'd call this an inscription. We have the author?s signature at the bottom. And it is an inscribed presentation. And in this case it's to another literary figure who's also involved in the same genre as this author. Which even adds a greater collectability to the book? Which brings up to the question of, if you go and you get an author to sign a book for you, by having him or her inscribe it to you, is that really going to help it's value. Well, only if you happen to be an important person. Often times you'll often find the books that are published and sold in a limited signed situation. Here we have a set of Arthur Making books. Limited, numbered and signed by the author. This is not a case of somebody going out and having a book personally inscribed or signed to you. But the question comes up, can you be sure that this signature in a book, it's not a special limited signed edition of the book; it's not an edition where the publisher is vouching for the legitimacy of the signature. Well, how can you be sure? If you didn't walk up to the author and have the author sign this book how you can be sure that this is a legitimate signature. And that gets into some difficult territory. That is why if you're going to be collecting these sorts of things it's best to deal with reputable dealers that specialize in signed inscribed books."