Vintage cookbooks can fetch big prices

March 8, 2023 by
 |  6 Comments  |  Leave Comment

Do you have a pristine first edition Joy of Cooking or Mastering the Art of French Cooking in your collection? Or perhaps some older or more rare volumes? If so, you could be sitting on a gold mine, according to a recent article about vintage cookbooks. Says Nicole Sawyer, the co-founder of Chattic.com, an online community and marketplace for collectibles, “cookbooks are an enormous collectible category with immense value potential.”

“Cookbooks can have auction potential, especially if they are rare, valuable, or have historical significance,” said Sawyer. “Some vintage cookbooks can fetch high prices at auction, particularly those that are in excellent condition and have a strong provenance.” Extremely old books, books by celebrity chefs, and even cookbooks once owned by famous people, command the highest prices.

The auction house Christie’s sold “Cookbook of the Pope’s Secret Chef” (c. 1570) by Italian chef Bartolomeo Scappi for $18,750 a few years ago. A first edition of Jacques Pépin’s1976 book La Technique: An Illustrated Guide to the Fundamental Techniques of Cooking is currently listed for $1,000 on eBay (the article got the title of the book wrong). Sets of rare or vintage books have also sold for tens of thousands of dollars at auction.

I don’t own any extremely rare or valuable cookbooks, but I now consider my $2 copy of La Technique to be a real bargain. Even if I did own anything worth a lot of money, I’m not interested in selling my cookbooks for a profit as I don’t collect books for their monetary worth but rather for their value in providing me inspiration or teaching me new techniques.

Category: Cookbook Lovers

Post a comment

6 Comments

  • Jenny  on  March 8, 2023

    660 Curries was running 300.00 last week.

  • Zephyrness  on  March 9, 2023

    Pristine? How sad. That means unused and, likely unloved. Years ago, Diana Kennedy was in my town and a local mexican restaurant had a dinner in her honor. There was a book signing, but I didn’t dare bring in my battered and stained copy of The Art of Mexican Cooking. She was disappointed. She told me she loves signing the beat up books, because she knows they are being used.

  • Limendacoconut  on  March 14, 2023

    I am currently in the process of cataloging my collection of cookbooks. This is a long overdue project, and one that I am enjoying. So many lovely community cookbooks and older classic editions. I remember that my Mom would read them like novels and reminisce about the places she’d visited. I love the handwritten notes in the back, the inscriptions, the dog-ears, the smell, the stained pages… all of it. Wonderful bits of history!

  • SerenaYLee  on  March 19, 2023

    Well, now I’m depressed. I just clicked over to that article and saw that the Arizona Cook Book is going for over $6000. I had that book many years ago and put it up for sale on eBay for chump change. I guess timing is everything!

  • anniette  on  March 20, 2023

    I weeded out a battered, signed, copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, signed by both Julia and Paul Child, and only remembered it a few years later, when I noticed my clean, new, copy wasn’t signed. I also threw out Ruth Reichl’s first published work, which I bought in college, from a college book shop, in the seventies, then later realized what I’d heaved out. I rarely throw out or weed out cookbooks, and will be scared to ever do so again.

  • NicoleSawyer  on  March 25, 2023

    @Darcie @Jenny @zephyrness @Limendacoconut @SerenaYLee @anniette

    Thank you for reading the Fox Business article. We’d love for you to share your cookbooks and other collectibles with us on Chattic.com
    Hope to see you in the community!

    -Nicole Sawyer

Seen anything interesting? Let us know & we'll share it!

Categories

Archives