Finding A First Ed. Book
Posted By seovine on May 9, 2011
First edition books can make a fantastic gifts for someone you love, but can often be very hard to find and extremely expensive. If you know what you’re looking for and where to look however, it is possible to find a few bargains.
If you’re trying to find a really special gift for a loved one, then you’d be well advised to try a 1st edition, especially for 18th birthday gifts. You have two main approaches if you’re looking to locate and buy a first edition. You can go for a newly released 1st edition, which will be in perfect condition and brand new. It won’t be as expensive and might become valuable in the future. Your other choice is to try and find a first edition of a much older book. The second option often has more meaning and value, but can be much harder to find and sometimes much more expensive.
By putting in this much time and effort however, you’re demonstrating to the recipient just how much they mean to you. Finding first editions of people’s favourite books make incredible personalised gifts.
Local charity shops are really good places to find them, as most people who donate to the shops don’t really bother to look through the books they’re giving away. There are a few things you should be aware of in order to ascertain if the book is a first edition. Sometimes it will be really simply and the book will have the words ‘first edition’ somewhere in the sleeve. Otherwise, you’ll be looking for the printing run number in the inner sleeve. This is a small sequence of numbers located at the bottom of one of the very first few inside pages. You’re looking for the first ed, first pressing number, which is usually sequential from 10 down to 1.
You can even get quite cheap first editions now that might some day be valuable, such as the Harry Potter books. They’re not expensive to buy or particularly difficult to find, and they make great stocking fillers.