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The Global Power City Index 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A recent article declared prices for art have gone so high, paintings- and apartments in a handful of world cities- have supplanted gold as a place for the wealthy to park their pelf.

Rare Books Digest wonders if books are trending that way (click on the article link to see larger version of the tables):

Where would a rare book index place in a performance chart showing the last 15 years? The answer to that question could very well be – “it depends on which rare books are included in such an index.” Would such an index focus on the strongest part of the rare book market or try to include a larger number of titles, more like the 5000 included in the Nasdaq index? A potential, new investor is quickly turned away by the lack of trusted indixes, and the likelihood that performance results can be skewed depending on amounts and selections of books included in such an index.

The Rare Book Sale Monitor (RBSM) has been tracking the sales performance of  “blue chips” for each of the major genre of rare books. Our author breakdown has focused on some of the most frequently traded authors from a number of time periods and nationalities. An attempt to create an all-inclusive, well-populated index is bound to diminish fluctuation of the peaks and valleys exhibited. On a smaller scale, some prices can be affected in the short term by cultural events, the death of an author, a new biography or film. But in the longer term, the demand will be set by larger forces, a long-standing cultural reassessment of an author’s work and their effect on our history and importance. In the very long run, generation preferences shift, affecting what is considered historically and culturally as important and may even have the reverse effect.

In 2014 our RBSM has recorded price increases for most of the genre and authors that we have been tracking, and 2015 is showing similar trends. While the RBSM index is not a measure of return on investment, it does capture the general trend that different types of rare books and some authors, are exhibiting through sales channels during each quarterly period.