Rules of collecting...???

Whenever I make the time to read Shelf Awareness, I always find something of interest that I want to share. Today it is a little tidbit about a fellow, Tim Toone, who collected a first edition of every book that J.K. Rowling published. His collection of 553 books is going up for auction next week and it is estimated that they collection may sell for as high as £40,000. I find the number rather surprising as J.K. Rowling hasn't stopped publishing... so essentially it isn't a complete collection... or would that not be taken into consideration? I guess I always assume that a person would collect an author that is a bit more established (I'm referring to length of time as an author. I'm obviously not judging this by number of books sold.) . Then again, the more I read this, the more I realize that my own assumptions are really coming into play here. Why shouldn't he collect a relatively new author - there is no rule that someone has to be dead before you start collecting their works. On the other hand, it seems like a bit more of a challenge to collect a particular author if they aren't still actively publishing books.

By my calculations, if he spent an average of £20 per book, then he has made a profit of over £28,000 - not a bad take, really. Perhaps I should start being more active in my husband's quest to collect Stephen King... ;-)

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