Valuable Chess Book? Winning With The Grunfeld

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Avatar of rdmccarthy

I was banging on about how chess books are often out of print, nobody reads them (generally) and the audience is a specialist crowd. Whilst boring my girlfriend with all this in a London second hand book shop ("Please... stop talking about chess" muhaha)I was scanning a chess section (all 19 inches of it) and came across something that caught my eye.

It's an opening book, a fashionable way to play, printed in the late 80s after Kasparov and Karpov had used in in their WCC matches, AND it had cuttings from an old chess magazine. All this added up to something of value, and for a mere £5 I snapped up "Winning with the Grunfeld" by Jeno Dory. When I googled it I saw people had also searched for the PDF... another good sign!

When I checked it online, it's on Amazon for £117 + £154?! Can this be right? Is it just rare?

The book is not the kind of study I should be doing but I figured I'd pick up the Grunfeld in a few years when my club play breaks 160ECF (I'm currently around 1700 FIDE) but I might just sell it on!

I think there's a good chance these books are undervalued by second hand stores that don't know the price people will pay.

Do you think it's actually worth anywhere near that?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winning-Grunfeld-Macmillan-Chess-Library/dp/0020160801

Pretty mad! What do you think?

Rob

Avatar of notmtwain
rdmccarthy wrote:

I was banging on about how chess books are often out of print, nobody reads them (generally) and the audience is a specialist crowd. Whilst boring my girlfriend with all this in a London second hand book shop ("Please... stop talking about chess" muhaha)I was scanning a chess section (all 19 inches of it) and came across something that caught my eye.

 

It's an opening book, a fashionable way to play, printed in the late 80s after Kasparov and Karpov had used in in their WCC matches, AND it had cuttings from an old chess magazine. All this added up to something of value, and for a mere £5 I snapped up "Winning with the Grunfeld" by Jeno Dory. When I googled it I saw people had also searched for the PDF... another good sign!

 

When I checked it online, it's on Amazon for £117 + £154?! Can this be right? Is it just rare?

The book is not the kind of study I should be doing but I figured I'd pick up the Grunfeld in a few years when my club play breaks 160ECF (I'm currently around 1700 FIDE) but I might just sell it on!

 

I think there's a good chance these books are undervalued by second hand stores that don't know the price people will pay.

 

Do you think it's actually worth anywhere near that?

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winning-Grunfeld-Macmillan-Chess-Library/dp/0020160801

 

Pretty mad! What do you think?

 

Rob

It is absurd. Used books are often priced at absurd levels by places like Amazon.

It is maybe worth what you paid for it.

There are many people trying to get free access to every book in the world .That proves nothing.

Avatar of rdmccarthy

So what you're saying is.... you don't want to buy it? lol

Avatar of EscherehcsE

I looked it up using a used book search engine - I found a good number of them, ranging from $3.00 to a little over $150.00.  Caveat emptor.

Avatar of IpswichMatt

I believe it's because some of these prices are generated by algorithms.

 

See the link below for an example of a $23,698,655.93 textbook:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-did-amazon-charge-23698655-93-for-a-textbook/