Make Money From Ladybird Books
Make Money From Ladybird Books
Almost under the noses of traditional booksellers, the desirability of Ladybird books has quietly crept up over the past few years to the point that some rare and collectible copies can now change hands for around £300. Not bad for a series which for thirty years sold for 2s 6d each.
Of course, with print-runs of thousands of copies, many books are still only worth pennies, but there 2B0-015 are some pleasant surprises around. The first place to look of course is your own childhood library, as many people have clung on to the books for sentimental reasons. Coming off the back of the recent trend for all things retro, Ladybird books could well continue to soar in popularity.
Most collectors either try to collect one of everything the company produced (which is quite a feat as there were several hundred produced in the most popular period – 1940-1980) or they specialize in a single series such as Fairy Tales, Rhymes, Animals or Adventures from History, to name but a few. Some hunt high and low for first editions, but this can be difficult as many Ladybird books often did not have any method for marking whether a book was a first edition or not.
Some collectors simply enjoy the books for the nostalgic childhood memories, while others like the uniformity in how great they look on shelves with the little bugs. Some are also drawn to particular illustrators and their imaginative artwork.
Prices for Ladybird books seem to depend on two main factors: which series they are from (some are much more popular than others) and how rare they are. There is a page on fan website The Wee Web that shows which series’ are more popular than others and which are particularly rare.
Some specific books and some whole series are now very rare and are sought by collectors all over the country. The early, six-book ‘Adventures of Wonk’ series, for example, is very hard to come by. The books, with stories about a Koala bear illustrated by Kiddell-Monroe, will sell for about £100 per copy with dust jacket and between £15-60 without.
The un-PC-sounding single book series ‘The Tinker’s Wig’ is also very hard to find. Published in 1947 it is something of a Ladybird oddity as not only is it twice the size of a 2B0-012 standard Ladybird book but it also has text printed on both sides of the pages, with fewer, 1920s style pictures. A copy with dust jacket would sell for £100-150, without you could get £40-60 for it.
Cinderella, a really well-loved title, was changing hands five years ago for £5 a copy. Now they’re £55 each and if you have one of the really rare copies that had a dust jacket it’s more like £250.
Officially, the rarest Ladybird book – so rare, it seems, that not one collector has even seen one – is a special printing of ‘The Computer’ from the ‘How it Works’ series (series 654) which was produced privately for the Ministry of Defense in 1972. Look out for a plain brown cover, specially requested by the MoD to save their trainees’ blushes!
You can usually find the books in car boot sales, jumble sales, charity shops and on websites. Abebooks and eBay are really good places to look. It’s also helpful to know that specialist bookshops often don’t know much about Ladybirds and it’s possible to get good ones at knock-down prices.
Opportunities are getting rarer, though. Ten years ago, you could get a whole box of Ladybird books for £1 at car boot sales or pick them up for 5p in charity shops. The internet, and particularly eBay, has put paid to that as the norm – prices have shot up over the last five years. You can expect to pay between £5 and £350 for a single book. People are starting to see what they can get for their old books and it’s getting harder to find great bargains. For some books prices have increased by hundreds of percent.
The best bargains can still be found in car boot sales as many individuals don’t realize how much the books are worth. Charity shops like Oxfam, which have book experts on hand, don’t sell them at the knock-down rate they used to.
At present, there isn’t a society for Ladybird lovers, but a few fans are discussing the possibility of setting one up. Once that happens, copies could be bought and sold even more energetically and prices, for the next decade or so at least, look like they will continue to rise.
Processing your request, Please wait....
