The first step should be a visual inspection of the jacket. However the misrepresentation has come about, the wise book collector will want to determine the status of the dust jacket before making a significant purchase. Equally, it possible that an honest but inexperienced dealer may legitimately acquire a first edition which has been fitted with a facsimile but may fail to spot it and hence sell it on as the genuine article. Given the dramatic difference between the prices that can be realised for collectable books with their original dust jacket and those without, it is unsurprising that some unscrupulous individuals will fit fake dust jackets and attempt to pass them off as genuine. Other reputable dealers will have similar practices. Even so, we check with every potential buyer that they are aware that the jacket is a reproduction. Here at the Virtual Bookshelf, when fitting facsimile dust jackets, we print “facsimile dust jacket fitted by The Virtual Bookshelf” followed by the year on underside of each one and place a small label with the same message on the inside front flap. Reputable booksellers will of course identify facsimiles as such. Although such copies have no collectable value, they do serve a practical purpose in much the same way as the original jacket would have done – enhancing the appearance of the book, protecting it from dust and damage and possibility increasing its saleability: some collectors may prefer to have a facsimile unless and until they have the opportunity and the means to acquire the real thing. Reputable booksellers from time to time fit jacketless books with facsimiles for genuine and legitimate reasons.
More recent fiction firsts can generally be considered almost without value to the collector unless in a pristine dust jacket. The celebrated book collectors, Allen and Patricia Ahearn, quote the rule of the thumb that the absence of a dust jacket on fiction firsts from the early part of the 20th century reduces the value by 75 per cent. The same book, in the same condition, but without a dust jacket is valued at £500. For instance, in Guide to First Edition Prices, R B Russell estimates a jacketed first edition of The Maltese Falcon at £15,000. The absence of an original dust jacket however can have an even greater effect, knocking as much as 95 per cent off the value of the book. A small nick on a single page can have a startling affect on value – reducing the price that collectors are prepared to pay by as much as half.
The level of that premium will be determined, almost entirely, on condition. Some collected books rarely appear on the market in genuinely fine condition and, when they do, the premium will be significant. First editions, in fine condition, of modern classics such as F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (New York, 1925) or Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (New York/London, 1930) can sell for tens of thousands of pounds.
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