r/rarebooks • u/Sonic-Fixer-5000 • 3d ago
Ask the Dust - John Fante - 1st pressing condition & pricing
My girlfriend has a first edition, first pressing she bought a long time ago. She no longer wants it and I am trying to help her price it to sell but at a fair price. There are two listings on eBay, $3,500 and $5,000. A few book sites have it listed for as much as $9,000. I can’t find anything about an actual sale price though. I am a record collector so I know eBay fantasy list prices never ever equal actual value.
It has the dust jacket and the binding is solid. Definitely worn and yellowed but I would consider it more aged than abused. If it was a record sleeve of this vintage, I would say VG (which matches the book grading I looked up).
Two questions:
Is G or VG more commonly used with books that would be G if modern but might be more generously graded when this old?
What is a fair price to expect and is there a better place to put it up for auction than eBay?
Thanks for the help! I’ll owe you some great advice on selling records.
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u/WigboldCrumb 2d ago
On ebay, the Research link under the More Tab in the Seller Hub is your friend for this one.
The current active listings for 1939 1st/1st shows the two you spoke of...$4890 has been listed since 6/4/2019 with 21 watchers. The $3500 listed 12/9/2024 has 3 watchers. Surprisingly none of these have "Best Offer" turned on currently.
There's also three for 1200, 1000 and 1000 without the dust jackets all listed by the same seller since 11/18/2024.
If you switch to sold listings which only goes back 3 years, you will only see one 1st edition that sold as buy it now.
April 2, 2025 sold for $150 with no dust jacket
There are some signed, limited edition 1980 Sparrow editions and the most recent sold at $2500 just a few weeks ago. Others of these sold only in 300, 400, 500 range.
If it were me, I'd probably list it for $4000 with best offer and see what happens.
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u/beardedbooks 2d ago
Auction records from the past decade show sold prices between about $1k and $3800 for copies with a dust jacket. I didn't look at the listings closely enough to determine condition. Pricing it at the higher end of that range seems fair to me. You can check vialibri.net for more listings if you haven't already and compare your condition to what you see there. Keep in mind that many of those dealers are very reputable, so you probably won't get the prices you're seeing on there. Another thing to consider is that many collectors will happily pay a bit more if it means buying from a reputable dealer vs. buying from an eBay seller they don't know. Just some things to keep in mind.
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u/flyingbookman 3d ago edited 2d ago
Definitely a desirable 1st to have. Pics of the book and jacket would be helpful.
Unlike records, books have printings, not pressings. Printing (used in the US) and impression (standard UK usage) mean the same thing with books, but pressing is never used. Just pointing that out in case you do list the book for sale.
In terms of age, books aren't usually graded on a curve. Good or VG mean the same thing, no matter the age of the book. No allowances given for time (at least in theory.)