Old motoring book trends
Ken Ball is 84 and still dealing in old motoring books, easily the oldest in the ranks. I’ve been away from book dealing for years since moving home to New Zealand and I was interested in Ken’s comments on price trends.
Time was when every collector who rated his library simply had to have The Grand Prix car volumes by Laurence Pomeroy but there was always confusion over how many volumes there were.
During the war, ‘Pom’ started putting together a prestige collection of features and reports on pre-war Grand Prix racing which was published in the late 1940s but then GP racing started off again in the 1950s creating a problem for ‘Pom’. So he started again, bringing his book up to date and stretching it to a pair of handsome volumes.
Problem was most collectors thought they already had volume one and only bought the second volume … and the whole thing immediately got out of balance. You really needed the updated two-vol set to add to the stand-alone first volume. Any of these large handsome volumes commanded good money but Ken says the market has cooled off and the two-vol set is now worth around 300 pounds… if you can find a punter.
The first three volumes of Automobile Year are still very collectable but the army of later glossy volumes are a drag on the market, according to Ken.
I remember the American publication, a sort of luxury glossy magazine, Automobile Quarterly being sought-after as a collection “but now you’re lucky to get a fiver each,” says Mr Ball. A few days later he e-mailed to say he had just been to a book auction in the UK where 166 mint copies of Automobile Quarterly complete with detailed index volumes, sold for £460… or close to half Ken’s quote!