What is the difference between rare books and antiquarian books?
Tom’s answer: There are probably a million technical answers to this question, and some of them are probably correct. “Antiquarian” means, according to the nearest available dictionary, “pertaining to antiquaries or antiquities” or in short, old stuff and/or the people who sell it. The same dictionary describes “rare” as “not thoroughly cooked” oops, wrong definition. Let’s try this one instead: “seldom met with or occurring; very uncommon.” “Rare” and “antiquarian” can be qualities that are encompassed in the same object, but that is not always the case. These qualities can be mutually exclusive – old books aren’t necessarily rare, and rare books aren’t necessarily old. Antiquarian, in the collectible book trade, is an imperfect term that describes the entire scope of the trade, even though the term may apply to dealers in relatively modern books, as well as to the hunchbacked and curmudgeonly “antiquarians” dealing in hoary and musty old tomes. This state of affairs has occasionally
