The expertise a serious collection requires — appraisal, search, and representation.
A rare book is only as valuable as the knowledge that surrounds it. Beyond buying and selling, Randall House offered the professional services that collectors, executors, and institutions rely upon. This page describes those services as the house practiced them.
Appraisals
An appraisal is a formal, defensible statement of value, and it is required far more often than new collectors expect — for insurance scheduling, for estate and probate settlement, for equitable distribution among heirs, and for charitable-donation tax purposes. A credible appraisal rests on current market data, an accurate identification of edition and state, and a frank assessment of condition. The house prepared written appraisals to professional standards, distinguishing clearly between replacement value, fair market value, and auction estimate — three figures that are often confused and rarely equal.
The Search Service
Every collector keeps a want list: the titles that complete an author, a subject, or a run. The house maintained such lists on behalf of its clients and drew on decades of trade contacts to run down elusive books — the right edition, the right issue, in the right condition. Patience is the search service's chief virtue; some books surface within weeks, others after years. As one of the house's own catalogue notes once put it of a long-sought volume, the firm had been searching twenty years and was prepared to look for twenty more.
Auction Representation
Buying at a major auction is a specialized skill. Catalogues must be read closely, condition assessed from a distance, estimates weighed against real market value, and nerve held in the room. The house represented clients at important sales in the United States and abroad, bidding on their behalf, inspecting lots in advance, and advising on strategy so that a buyer neither overpaid nor lost a wanted book for the sake of a single increment.
Consultation and Collection Building
Perhaps the most valuable service of all was counsel: helping a collector define a field, set priorities, and build a coherent collection rather than an accumulation. A focused collection — assembled with discipline and an eye to condition — gives more pleasure to its owner and holds its value better than a scattered one. For the vocabulary you will meet along the way, consult our Glossary of Book-Collecting Terms; if you are on the other side of the transaction, see Selling to Us.