What is the value of 1933 British Encyclopedia illustrated 10 Volume set?

Answer 1

Virtually nothing. All the information in this edition is out of date. And, in any case, no-one except a few odd-balls want these books cluttering up their homes any more. All the data, and more, is available on-line.

From another member:

I am an owner of 12 volumes of this, I'm not an odd-ball as you put it, nor do they "clutter" my home. They may be 'out of date', but can be useful to some people.

I have had just a quick look ' on-line' - and there are two volumes selling on an eBay shop priced 14.99 each ! ( volumes 1 & 5 )

Quite obviously, in my answer above, I was generalising. I was not implying that owners of these volumes are all odd-balls. Perhaps, my choice of words was unfortunate but it cannot be denied that we are in the IT age and that, as a consequence, few people want to own volumes wherein much of the data therein is out of date. Conversely, there are always a few research/historically-minded souls who might be interested in owning such a set and gaining perspectives of the world from pre-WW2 volumes such as these.

I recently sold a set of bound papers dating from the 30's and 40's relating to drug busts by the Egyptian anti-narcotics police. I found a buyer, who was a DEA operative in the US, but clearly, despite the fact that they were probably unique, there was only a very tiny market for such publications. Should you reach a decision to sell, then that is the time that you may find out whether there are any buyers for them or not.

As for me, I readily admit to being an odd-ball and am not ashamed of being one. It's part of my uniqueness.

Incidently, just because an Ebay seller plucks a price out of thin air to try and induce bidders to pop in a bid, it does not necessarily mean that he will get that price. Millions of articles put up for sale on Ebay never find a new owner. That why the owners of Ebay laugh all the way to the bank!