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"BDKR guideline" update

28 Feb 2012

Well, I have finally taken the big step and updated the BDKR guideline prices in the database. The new guideline price (which is intended to reflect what you should pay in a decent bookshop for a book in reasonable, but not perfect condition) has been calculated on the basis of the 24,000+ online auction results we now have recorded, together with the data used for the original assessment.

The changes are sometimes big for individual editions, but overall, they tend to average out. On a weighted basis, the BDKR values are now just about 98% of what they were before the revision.

There has been a trend for the rarer editions to become more expensive, and the more frequently found ones to become cheaper. Overall, German-language editions have come down slightly, English-language volumes have gone up a little, and the French editions have more or less remained where they were.

The minimum guideline price has been left at €25 - you can't really expect to find a book of this age and quality, in good condition, for less than that. On the other hand, the top prices have been lifted to €3,000 and even €4,000 in some cases. Of course, some volumes just never appear so it is impossible to assess a market price, but we can guess by comparing with similar editions.

On a philosophical level, these prices really only reflect the market value of the books, not any form of judgment as to their editorial quality or anything like that. This of course opens up a field of very interesting debate, but the BDKR value is, in the end, just a monetary value and it seems to me the best information I can offer our visitors is a moderately objective indication of what the going market rate is, rather than any form of literary judgment.

In the aggregate, eBay auction results tend to be 40% of the BDKR guideline. This reflects a greater variation in quality than what you might find in a good bookshop; the greater risk you run buying online; and also the fixed overheads a bricks-and-mortar book dealer must contend with. In a "real" bookshop, you can wander in, browse and hold the actual books in your hands, make a buying judgment and walk out with the object of your desire there and then - the additional cash you have to part with is the price for the experience and convenience of shopping in the physical world.

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