Research
Our guide to collecting, terminology and referencing
The facts about each rare book or document give us insight into its value, provenance and historical context. Research is vital to establishing a rare book's market value, since an item's price is directly related to the history surrounding it. Details on the edition, printing, author, former owners, signatures, and more-if validly proven-can quickly escalate a book's value in dollars, and it's important to document and validate each claim about a book or document's history. Value aside, research quenches our thirst for knowledge as collectors and history buffs.
We at Yeoman's can offer plenty of information about rare books, maps, documents and the like. Here we provide information on the why to collect, answers to our most frequently asked questions, and the lingo of the industry in our book collecting terms, map collecting terms and collecting acronyms.
But of course, we also rely on the help of reference books and websites to teach us more. To this end, you can also find our most trusted reference sources for researching rare book collecting.
And simply to share what we can about two our favorite figures in American history, we provide the biographies and famous quotes of Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Jackson.
Since a collector's work is never done, each of us is forever in search of more information on the pieces we collect. We hope the information provided here whets your appetite for researching rare pieces of American history and encourages you to learn more.
