Note that the PDA scanner guys ignore books without barcodes, which means anything prior to the late 60’s is still fair game. Not that your chances are especially high either way.
A year or so back I found a very good copy of Neil Gaiman’s mid-80s quote anthology Ghastly Beyond Belief, his first published SF/Fantasy book. It only ever ran to one edition and one printing, and is thus immensely collectible, with some sellers asking several hundreds of dollars. I, however, was charged the princely sum of $5, by a specialist used bookstore who really ought to have known their stock better. And I am permanently on the lookout for Gaiman’s first ever book, a Duran Duran biography.
I own two first edition Dr. Suess books. One from my childhood, and one from a rummage sale. Priced at 25 cents.
I’d sell them if I could figure out how to get a fair price.
Marital aid for the hardcore Nazi. 
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SFWA got involved and forced Ace to pay (they claimed they always meant to pay but couldn’t find Tolkien’s address). Tolkien made changes to the edition (adding the maps and glossaries, for instance) so that the book could be copyrighted. If you look at some of the earlier Ballentine paperback editions, there was a note on the back from Tolkien saying that this was the authorized edition, and that out of courtesy, people should only buy this.
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My dad has the Ballantine edition of *The Hobbit *with that notice on the back. I took a fantasy literature course in college and used my dad’s book to save a few bucks at the bookstore. The professor was thrilled to have an actual real example of the notice to share with the class. I also took a Northern European Mythology course with the same professor later in which he also taught The Hobbit. I used the same book and once again he made me read out the notice on the back.
Which makes the joke in Bored of the Rings mean something. If you’ve never seen a copy of LofR with the notice, you wonder what the hell the parody is talking about with their “notice.”
Alas, I passed up a similar set at a little bookshop that popped up in a nearby neighborhood, years ago. There was also an Ayot St Lawrence edition of the collected works of George Bernard Shaw. Not having much cash on hand that day, I settled for a copy of Mothers & Amazons by the Austrian feminist Helen Diner because of a preface by Joseph Campbell; it is a witty & interesting work with some rather odd ideas.
Of course, when I returned to the neighborhood, the shop was gone…
Not long ago, I picked up a little copy of I, Claudius for 50 cents at a charity resale shop–the sort that only has a small bookcase in the corner. At home I discovered it was well worn–but autographed by the author on a visit to Houston in 1966. A slip of paper in the book read “Mr Robert Graves, Deya, Majorca”–I’m guessing the mysterious “Shirley” was a pretty lady & he thought she had the makings of a muse…
Found 2 Gary Larson-signed “Far Side” paperback collections.
I don’t know if I’ve ever found anything worth a lot of money, but I’ve found things I considered valuable solely because they were interesting. I collect old mysteries, and I have a few first-edition hardcovers from Ellery Queen and Margery Allingham that date to about the 1930s. I’ve also gotten a lot of very nice editions of things like Harvard Classics volumes and Shakespeare reprints, which I would have otherwise bought as new, flimsy paperbacks.
The oddest thing I ever found was a pedagogical edition of “Hermann und Dorothea” so old that the poem, in untranslated German, is printed in Fraktur. Pencil writing on the front flyleaf indicates that it belonged to a high school student named Waldemar in 1916. It also says he lived in Indiana; how it got to a used bookstore in Flagstaff, Arizona, I have no idea.
If you were wondering, kids who were bored in class before the advent of band logos doodled the signs they saw outside the school window. POST NO BILLS and things about hitching posts, etc. 
I had a lucky find today, although it was a movie not a book: Fairgame, a 1985 “ozsploitation” horror movie. The DVD’s been out of print for several years and used copies on Amazon range from $45 to $75.
I stopped at a video store today to shop for used videos. They had the bloodmobile set up outside so I donated blood first. And then, stocked up with good karma, I saw a copy of the DVD for four dollars.
Bumping this to brag about a garage sale find from this morning.
Found a 1st edition (2nd printing) of “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” for $1. Book is in very fine condition (doesn’t seem to have ever been read) and the dustjacket is in very good condition with only a couple of very minor tears. Not sure if it’s worth much at all, but it’s gotta be worth more than a buck. Photos here.
In an antique/junk shop, St Elmo’s Fire by Augusta Jane Evans. printed late 1800’s. great condition, under $5. Turns out she was a notable southern author. It caught my eye because the name is the same as my kid, had to show her…
I got a signed copy of Charles Sheffield’s The Web Between The Worlds from a nearby used paperback shop. I think I paid $5 for it. It’s probably not worth a fortune, but I went back the next day to ask them if they shouldn’t charge more for a signed book. Nope - they were fine with the price they charged. It’s still part of my collection of signed books that might be worth something someday"
We have a nice St. Vincent de Paul thrift store here that has an excellent book room, but that means that anything really valuable usually gets noticed and picked up pretty quickly. I’ve found a lot of great books there, but the only unusually valuable things I ever found were a set of three old 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules (G1, G2, and G3) still in the shrink-wrap. I sold them for $50 or $60 each on eBay.
Dad used to buy books by the pound in Huron, SD and Cleveland, OH and Wichita KS and such. Mom handed me a signed copy of a Thomas Mann book a few weeks ago. She also has a complete set of the works of Schiller, in German, from the … 1860’s?
Dad loved the classics and was buying from people who sold by the pound. Pretty cool. She asked me to find a good book buyer to see what they are worth. ( If anything ). It does seem to me that they’re wicked hard to find. Don’t mean to hijack, but are there any reputable rare books dealers in NYC these days?
Wikipedia has this: “While Hitler was in power (1933–1945), Mein Kampf came to be available in three common editions. The first, the Volksausgabe or People’s Edition, featured the original cover on the dust jacket and was navy blue underneath with a gold swastika eagle embossed on the cover. The Hochzeitsausgabe, or Wedding Edition, in a slipcase with the seal of the province embossed in gold onto a parchment-like cover was given free to marrying couples. In 1940, the Tornister-Ausgabe was released. This edition was a compact, but unabridged, version in a red cover and was released by the post office available to be sent to loved ones fighting at the front. These three editions combined both volumes into the same book.”
I take this to mean that the local Nazi Party officials routinely gave a copy of the wedding edition to every German couple who got married at that time.
One of my most treasured books as a child was a sky-blue hardback containing all the Jeeves short stories. Foolishly, I sold a load of books when I moved away in my late teens, and this was the one I always regretted losing.
Thirty years later, I was visiting my parents in the same Devon town where they’d always lived, and found myself with half an hour to kill in the local market. Browsing through the second-hand bookstall there, I discovered a copy of that same edition of the Jeeves stories, in good condition at a very reasonable price.
I can’t prove it was the selfsame copy, but I like to imagine it drifting round various Devon homes for three decades before finally finding its way back to me.
Years ago I bought a copy of Thoroughbreds by C.W. Anderson for $5. It turned out to be autographed, which presumably would have increased the value, but I wasn’t able to find out how much.
There used to a “used book” store that was nothing but an old barn filled with boxes of books piled head high in haphazard stacks. You would drive up, roust the old man out of his house, and spend hours digging through tottery piles. I did find an American first edition of Tarzan there, once.
There was an immense and comprehensive used book store in the original Cheltenham Shopping Center just over the city line from Philadelphia ( anchored at one end by the infamous Cheltenham Theater, where I saw a Cinerama print of 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in original release).
That store formed and informed my childhood and teenage years. The owner was a sharp kind fellow who adored reading, adored books and firmly believed in allowing kids to read whatever caught their eye. I’ve always been in his debt for letting me buy a used copy of the paperback run of The Hite Report on Female Sexuality.
I was 13.
