Are Old Law Books Worth Anything?

Some old law books are worth a good deal and some are worth very little, and their age is rarely what decides it. A shelf of matching volumes can be a sought-after run or a set that nobody needs any more, and from the outside the two look much the same.

Here is what actually makes the difference, so you can tell roughly where your books sit before you ask anyone for a valuation.

What the set is

Law books are mostly bought and sold as sets. The long-running series, such as the All England Law Reports, The Law Reports and the Weekly Law Reports, and the encyclopaedias, such as Halsbury's Laws of England and Halsbury's Statutes, are the core of what law library buyers look for.

Our own shop, Law Book Sellers, lists sets like these for sale, because lawyers, libraries and students still buy law reports and encyclopaedias in print. That demand is what gives a set its resale value.

A single loose volume from a large set, on its own, is a different matter. It is one volume of something a buyer would want whole.

Whether the run is complete

For law reports and encyclopaedias, completeness usually matters more than anything else. A run with no gaps can be sold on as a complete set. A run with missing years means the next owner has to find the missing volumes, which is why gaps reduce what a set is worth.

So when you look at a run of law reports, the useful questions are the first and last years, and whether anything is missing in between. A photo of the spines answers both.

Which edition it is

For practitioner texts, the edition matters most. Lawyers working from a practitioner text need the current edition, so a text several editions behind is worth much less than a recent one. The edition is printed on the spine and on the title page.

Encyclopaedias work the same way. Halsbury's Laws of England has been through five editions since 1907; the fourth ran from 1973 to 1987 and the fifth has been published since 2008. Knowing which one you have is the first thing anyone valuing it will ask.

What condition it is in

Condition matters for every kind of law book. Water damage, smoke damage and mould reduce the value of a set, and so do loose or broken bindings. Library stamps and labels are worth mentioning too.

Old leather bindings like the ones in the photograph above, from the 1890s volumes of The Law Reports, often show their age. An honest photograph of the worst of the bindings is the most useful thing you can send.

When an old law book is a rare book

A few law books are valuable as books in their own right, not as working law. The Law Society's guidance is that legal books are more likely to be valuable if they were printed before 1800, and for those an auction house that sells legal material is the right place to ask. The Law Society names Bloomsbury Auctions, Sotheby's and Bonhams as auction houses that deal with legal books.

If you are not sure whether something is rare, include it in your photos and say so.

Insurance value and sale value are different

If you are asking for a valuation, be clear which kind you want. An insurance valuation is the cost of replacing the books, and a sale valuation is what you could expect to get for them. The Law Society notes that insurance valuations tend to be higher. Firms planning a merger or sale sometimes need a valuation so the library can be counted among the firm's assets.

A valuation from a buyer like us is a sale valuation: it is what we can pay for the books.

Finding out what yours are worth

The quickest way to find out is to ask. Photograph each bay of shelving straight on, in good light, so the spines can be read, and tell us the town or postcode where the books are. We value the books for free and tell you which sets we can buy. Where part of a collection has little resale value, we can talk about collecting it free of charge so the shelves are still cleared.

Get a free valuation, or WhatsApp your photos to 07920 748314.