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Dust Jackets And Their Books

ne of the odd, interesting, or goofy copy, but not be seen on a replaced jacket. can think of. With the wonders of photoshop,
things about book collecting is that Another tip-off that something is a bad mar- any defects in the original jacket can be digitally
Owith some collectible books, the dust riage is if someone took scissors and clipped off repaired, making the facsimile as good or better
jacket is worth more than the book. The dust the price which is usually on the inside front than new.
jacket is the removable printed paper cover upper corner of the dust jacket. If the price of There is absolutely nothing wrong with fac-
that you usually see on hardbound books. the book was raised in the first year or so after simile dust jackets. There is nothing wrong with
Determining Value the first edition came out, the making them or buying them and nothing
Serious collectors want their higher price might be the only wrong with putting them on old books. The
books to be in the very best difference between the dust only problem is when a dishonest person tries to
condition possible and have jacket of a 1929 book which turn a $200 book into a $2,000 book by adding
every little detail in hand that cost $1.50, and the 1930 reprint a modern facsimile dust jacket and selling it as
each book is supposed to have. which might have cost $1.75. the original.
Since dust jackets are made That way if you had a 1930 The best way to tell if a jacket on a valuable
of paper, they are fragile and can jacket and snipped off the first edition is genuine would be to compare it
easily be damaged, or lost, or price, it would not be easy or side by side with one that you knew was gen-
even deliberately thrown away even possible to tell it from the uine. Minute differences in printing, ink, glossi-
by people who don’t know that 1929 jacket. ness or dullness, and thickness of the paper
you aren’t supposed to do This is why first editions would probably be easier to spot.
things like that. with price-clipped jackets aren’t But obviously, that is not always easy to do.
And even if the book is not worth as much as the first edi- The next best thing would be to have experience
valuable or collectible, having tion with jackets that have not with old books and old dust jackets. But that
the dust jacket for it makes the been price-clipped. can take years! The best is to know someone in
book more attractive for me to A first edition of F. Scott The Invasion of the business who you can trust.
sell in my shop because these Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Technology The Evolution of Dust Jackets
days most books are pretty drab $3,000 without the dust Now with the advent of Dust jackets are a relatively modern develop-
looking without their jackets. jacket, $30,000 with it desktop printers, it is possible to ment in the evolution of books and didn’t start
Now just because you have a make a genuine-looking original to appear on books until the turn of the last
book with its original dust jacket does not mean dust jacket that would be very difficult to distin- century. Don’t worry if your 1623 first edition
that it is automatically valuable. For an everyday guish from an original. Not impossible, but Shakespeare does not have a dust jacket because
book, it might only add a few dollars to the difficult. Under high magnification it would be it never had one.
value. For a first edition or a collectible book possible to tell that it was a copy and not an By the early 1900s, publishers discovered
from the turn of the last century on, the jacket original because of the differences in the print- that dust jackets were a cheap and easy way to
may be 75% to 90% or more of the value of ing processes. Look at the reverse side of the make their books more attractive and saleable.
that book. That means your $30,000 first jacket, which is usually They were cheaper to
edition first issue of Fitzgerald’s The Great blank as you should be print than the decora-
Gatsby in its dust jacket would be worth only able to tell if the paper it tive hard covers that
$3,000 or less without the jacket. was printed on is old or books had, they saved
Sometimes people who have a collectible modern. It might be money, too.
book that is missing its jacket will try to locate possible to artificially The first dust
another jacket somewhere as a replacement “age” the paper, but jackets were relatively
which would make that copy more valuable. that would not be the plain but became more
If a genuine first edition jacket from one same as natural toning colorful as time went
copy is put on another genuine first edition, on genuine old paper. on. And generally, the
sometimes that is okay and sometimes it is not. But where would fancier the dust jacket
Such a switch is called a marriage. you find a genuine dust was, the plainer the
It is a closely guarded dirty little secret in the jacket to copy in the actual cover of the
book world that sometimes the dust jackets on first place? This is what the average modern book looks book became. Why
very early printings are identical to the jacket on With thanks to the like with and without its dust jacket. bother to have a fancy
the first edition. Usually, there are some minor internet, there are sever- decorated hardcover
changes, but not always. So if the jacket of a al sites that sell high-quality facsimile dust on a book if it was going to be covered up
cheaper early printing is the same as the jacket jackets of just about any collectible book you with a dust jacket.
for the valuable first edition, it might be impos- republished from July, 2016
sible to tell if the two ever got married. James Dawson has owned and operated the Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe, MD since 1975, when he decided
But, not so fast. There might be tell-tale that it would be more fun to buy and sell old books and maps than to get a “real” job. For a born collector like
clues. If there was damage to the cover of the Jim, having a shop just might be another excuse to buy more books. He has about 30,000 second hand and
first edition you would expect to see similar rare books on the shelves, and just about all subjects are represented. He can be contacted at P.O. Box 154;
marks on the dust jacket if it was original to that Trappe, MD 21673; 410-476-3838; unicornbookshopMD@gmail.com; www.unicornbookshop.com

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