For Natalie Bauman, a rare book dealer and collector, the star of her private
collection is a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Large, thin,
fragile and published without a hard cover, the book is exceedingly rare and
valuable. Only about 800 copies were produced; perhaps 300 survive. Bauman
estimates hers to be worth $100,000, but her love for the volume has almost
nothing to do with its market value. For Bauman, Leaves of Grass is a window
that provides a privileged glimpse of the unmediated greatness of her favorite
poet. “Whitman was intimately involved with the printing of the book. He set
much of the type himself,” she says. “It’s thrilling, actually, to handle it and
read it.”  Bauman, president of Bauman Rare Books, with storefronts in
Philadelphia and Manhattan, has been in the business for almost 30 years, but
books still hold the power to transport her to a place of sheer bliss. This is
what it means to be irretrievably bitten by the rare-book-collecting bug.
Assembling and improving a quality rare book collection is a lifelong pursuit
that, if intelligently planned and carefully executed, will typically yield both
personal and financial rewards over time. “The rate of appreciation depends on
the same factors as in art or antiques or any other collectible,” says Louis
Weinstein, cofounder of Heritage Book Shop in West Hollywood, Calif., adding,
“If you buy well and work with an expert, annual appreciation could easily be 15
percent to 25 percent.” Certain broad guidelines can help shape our
collection. If we are enamored of a specific author, we can seek his or her
published works as well as related material, including biographies. Or we might
opt to pick a subject instead, gathering works on a beloved pastime, such as
golf, or a chosen profession, such as law or medicine. Francis Wahlgren, head of
the books and manuscripts department at Christie’s New York, says that many
collectors are choosing to collect “highspots,” or key works that are widely
recognized as important and enduring milestones from across the cultural
spectrum, from Shakespeare’s folios to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary to Darwin’s
Origin of Species to the novels of Swift, Joyce, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Steinbeck
and Nabokov.
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