A Letter From America #24
The Exchange Rate
and the Rare Book Market
From
the Rare Book Review
You’ll never buy a book on this continent again.
At least that’s what it feels like in the United
States, now that the shoe is on the other foot when it comes to exchange rates.
Twenty months ago, with the pound at one thirty-something and the euro at ninety
cents, I was able to buy up a storm at the London Book Fair and related events.
As I write this the pound is $1.85 and the euro $1.27, forty percent higher than
their trough, with no end in sight, and I doubt if I could have bought any of
the items from 2002 at this exchange. There are reasons both obvious and arcane
for the shift, but the bottom line for American book buyers is the same; our
cash ain’t nothin’ but trash.
Think of buying at auction, and the story only gets
worse. Up to $100,000, we now add a 20% buyer’s premium at one house and 19.5%
at the other. A bid of one pound, in reality, costs $2.25. Sotheby’s, which
used to render estimates in euros, pounds, and dollars, now realistically just
does it in euros and pounds. It already took fortitude to stand the auction
house gaff, but now the prospect is daunting indeed for Americans. (By the way,
has anybody else noticed that, after Sotheby’s and Christie’s paid over a
half billion dollars in fines for colluding on raising the buyer’s premium,
they have now raised that rate again in almost exact lockstep – bar half a
percent – to its present astronomical level? All of us who collected on the
class action settlement in 2003 will now just pay it back in the form of higher
rates – provided we continue to bid at auction, that is.)
On one level this is all just part of the exchange
rate spin cycle. The early 1980s and its strong dollar made England and Europe a
happy hunting ground for American dealers and collectors (I stupidly turned down
a chance to buy the old Francis Edwards reference library in 1985, when the
pound was $1.15). Many collectors managed to hang on when tide turned in the
latter 1980’s. An American was the biggest buyer at the DeBelder sale in 1987,
when the rate was $1.76. But somehow it feels different this time. Between my
writing this and publication there will have been the most significant string of
classic famous single-owner sales we have had in a long time: the first
Macclesfield sale, the Keynes collection, the Vander Poel literature, Lady
Eccles’ English drama, and Maurice Neville’s 20th-century
literature. It will be interesting to see how the buyers from both sides of the
Atlantic do at the present rates of exchange. Great books will sell very
strongly in these sales, because the market is so hungry for major material and
because these are truly great libraries. What roll will currency play?
The weakness of the dollar cuts both ways. If it
provides European dealers with an opportunity to buy more cheaply than their
American counterparts, it also undercuts the major marketplace. More English and
French dealers than would readily admit it sell more to the United States than
they do at home. There aren’t many books left in England, after all. They are
just moved there from the States to be sold back to Americans by people with
English accents. Americans with stronger livers prefer to do the same thing in
Paris. Of course, it is more than likely that some of the nicest of these books
will head straight for the Middle East anyway, leaving all others in the wake.
Being a patriot, I feel bad about all this. Don’t we
have a right to the cultural heritage of the West? And what about my cheap
European vacation?
Ah well. Perhaps it is time for some more Bookselling
Catechism of Cliché. If books are put up at auction, what are they?
Important.
Yes, but assume they are good books?
Highly important.
Certainly, but I mean really good books.
Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Magnificent.
Quite right. And how did the late, great, collectors
pursue their books?
Ardently.
What altitude did they hope to attain?
Highlights.
What opposite altitude measured their fascination with
their topics?
Deep.
And what is the nature of the gilt on their bindings?
Rich.
And the nature of the collectors themselves?
Rich.
And the rewards that await us potential buyers?
Rich.
And what do we find the auction house estimates?
Rich.
– William S. Reese