Serious question, was it smart to trust that old book dealer's advice on buying a 1940s first edition?

An older guy at a local antique shop in Portland told me to always buy the ugliest copy of a rare book because it's least likely to be a fake or a rebind. I found a beat-up copy of a Steinbeck novel for 12 bucks, cracked spine and all. Turns out the dust jacket underneath was a first-state issue worth maybe 800 dollars. Did that one piece of advice hit or just get lucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_diana23d ago

Yeah @the_lee, so your perfect plan is to just stare at the nice covers and hope for the best?

uma_ellis23d ago

Totally stuck in the middle of that mess, right?

the_lee24d ago

Are you seriously asking if one lucky score means that old guy's advice was genius rather than just a random fluke? You could just as easily pass up a pristine copy with a hidden flaw based on that logic and end up with a worthless piece of junk. It's confirmation bias at its finest, you got lucky, not smart.

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