RARE BOOK GUIDE - THE RUNNERS, THE RIDERS & THE ODDS

22 January 2007

Elisabeth Bennion. Antique Medical Instruments.

Elisabeth Bennion. ANTIQUE MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS. Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co.,University of Berkeley, 1979.

Current Selling Prices
$200-$400 /£100-£200

ISBN 0856670529


COLLECTABLES / MEDICINE
Useful art book with lots of well researched info on makers etc., Long out of print. Essential to dealers in the field. Covers only European and English instruments.We're talking antique blood letting and leeching instruments, lancets etc. The book contains a most detailed directory of surgical instrument makers. It also includes information on spectacles, dental and veterinary instruments, trepans, ear trumpets, extractors, scalpels, and invalid feeding utensils. Illustrations are in both color and black and white; there is an extensive bibliography and a glossary.

VALUE? Turns up on ebay where the actual instruments are also traded. Not scarce but always a little over £100. The CD Rom is available at $50 but the book is preferred. One re- lister wants £320. By the way there is a quite pervasive way of valuing books by the web that is wholly erroneous and you often see people doing it (especially sellers.) They take the highest price and the lowest price and divide by 2. That would put this book at £220, whereas decent copies can be bought for £120. If you see several copies of the same book in the same condition at a spread of prices from, say, £10 to £40 you would buy the one at £10 whether you were Bill Gates or Johnny Rotten. It is always difficult to get this point across to sellers, because it is not good news, but it is totally, utterly and completely irrefutable.
[ Want level 15-25 Quite High]

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