[Runscott]

There are plenty of forum members who have nice vintage book collections.

The reason we don't have a lot of book discussions is that this is a card and collectibles forum - to most here, books are useful only as much as their value for providing information related to cards and collectibles, or their ability to provide dollars to fill pockets or fuel the building of collections. If this were a sports book collectors forum, the results you saw in Leon's poll would be totally different.

I used to look for good deals on expensive books and purchase accordingly. The problem was that I always ended up needing to sell some of them, the result being that I no longer had the book and the information it contained. I began replacing some of the more expensive copies with inexpensive modern reprints, especially if there were no photographs in the original, or the reprint photos sufficed. Spalding's 'National Game' is a perfect example, as is the huge-format 1911 book that was re-printed a few years ago and is available for under $30 (I can't remember the title, but it has a beautiful litho on the front and maroon backing boards). The early Spalding and Reach Guides that did not contain photos are also good in the reprint versions, but the ones with glossy inserts really can't be replaced. Most of the great coffee table photo books can still be purchased at reasonable prices, and I recommend getting ALL of them.

Max could probably create a really good list of baseball books, along with the quality (or existence) of their reprint versions. Maybe at some point I'll send him what I have and between us we can come up with something that is useful.