![]() A facsimile edition came out in 1971 and would itself by now have some value, but let’s face it-a copy’s a copy. One of the most frequently asked questions online with regard to old books is “How much is my 1768 Britannica set worth?” Inevitably they show modern editions, not worth very much beyond the priceless knowledge they contain. I wanted to scream, “But your lola wasn’t alive in 1768!”, but I let it go at that, and thanked him for his time, and for his patience with a curmudgeon. “My Lola Filomena wouldn’t lie!” he insisted. “Look,” he said with more than a hint of exasperation, “it says Copyright 1768!” I tried to explain the difference between copyright dates and editions (the 15 thedition in 2010 was the Britannica’s last printed version). The seller confirmed that the set, indeed, was published in 1970, but that it was truly and surely the original 1768 edition. ![]() Of course, as soon as it arrived, all my silly hopes were dashed, as I saw a pile of crisp volumes that looked very much like the set I owned back in college. (The set below is from nbc.com, but it looked like it.) Might the books have been brought to Manila by a British trader in the 1800s (the encyclopedia hadn’t been published yet when they occupied Manila in 1762-64), then acquired by Lola Filomena’s buena familia forbears? I was thrilled by the possibilities, and asked the seller to send me a picture of the set. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) All right, I thought-that at least was a good sign, the stamp of age. The seller swore that the set had been in his family for generations, and that it had come down to him from his Lola Filomena. So I wasn’t about to brush off a lead offhand the strangest things have emerged from local sources in my antiquarian forays. But the message pricked my attention because, as unlikely as finding any book from the 1700s might be in the Philippines, my oldest book-a work in English on the history of institutions, published in London in 1551 and still in very good condition-actually turned up in Cubao. I’d specifically stated in my ad that I wasn’t interested in buying encyclopedias, Bibles, and law books. I got a text from this nice fellow who said that he had a complete set of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1768 to sell to me. I’d explained that by “old,” I meant books from at least the early 1900s, and preferably from the 1800s (my collection includes books and documents from the 1700s, 1600s, and 1500s, but in the Philippine context, 18-something should be old enough). I HAD an interesting exchange online recently with a forum member who was responding to my call for old, interesting books that people wanted to sell.
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