What kind of old textbooks do people collect?

I've heard that many people are interested in collecting old textbooks from "way back when". Exactly what kind of textbooks do these collectors look for? I found a bunch of old textbooks at a church sale and was just thinking about it.|||I have a modest collection of old math books (pre-WWII) in Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, a table of Logarithms, and so on. I also have some science books, such as Astronomy published in 1876, Chemistry from 1854, and others. It is fun for me to see how math was taught before the "New Math" and also what is still taught the same way. I also really enjoy reading the latest knowledge of previous years.



My Astronomy textbook does not mention Pluto, but it speculates on a planet called Vulcan closer to the Sun than Mercury. There is of course no mention of Relativity, but there is a serious mention of the Flood. The Chemistry textbook doesn鈥檛 have the Periodic Table in it. I don鈥檛 read them to make fun of the past, but to see how knowledge and attitudes accumulated over time.



I had many of the books even in high school. When I had to read Gulliver鈥檚 Travels for English class, I noticed that the Laputans had the number of Martian moons correct (2) as well as some details of their orbits and sizes. Phobos and Deimos were discovered in 1877, a year after my Astronomy textbook that stated there were no moons. At the time Swift was writing, a century before, no one knew about the moons, so how did he?



Atlases aren鈥檛 exactly textbooks but they are references, and anyway I keep them with the textbooks. I like to have them from different years (1913, 1928, 1943, 1957, and 2007 are my current spanning set, with others in between). I use them as references when I study history or read historical fiction, to understand how the world was at that time.



Anyway, that is the kind of textbook I look for. Something that shows a previous understanding or approach to the knowledge of the world. I collect them because they are so much fun, and so fascinating to read. I don鈥檛 think a single one of my old textbooks is worth more than $10, so I don鈥檛 imagine I qualify as a serious collector. Church sales, library bookstores, and similar are my sources, rather than elegant book shows.|||I would buy used at GreenTextbooks.com - Saving the Planet One Textbook at a Time


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