Rare, precious, valuable?

I had the rare surprise of discovering I have a rare book in my collection. I love Amy Hempel's short stories, and I have one paperback of hers that is valued at more than $55 on eBay. Makes you think about the value of keeping your books, doesn't it? Part of me says sell it! I may very well run into another copy at another thrift store some day. And the other part says, how many people love Amy Hempel the way I do? Not many. So probably not many librarians, who are always being forced to edit down their collections and ditching books by lesser-known authors. So I won't be able to find these on a shelf in 10 years when I want to read that one story again. And it makes me think that some of these books with small print runs may become very rare indeed one day.

Related readings:

Amy Hempel's stories:
"Today Will Be a Quiet Day" and the collection At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom

See Lawrence Weschler's essays in A Comedy of Values about this guy named Dobbs who draws money and then uses it in transactions, but not in the ways you might guess. It will warp your brain forever on the notion of how cultures agree and disagree when they ascribe value to things that may not intrinsically have any, like paper money.

And OK this one's not related, but it's from the same era (what I think of as the Raymond Carver years). There's a wonderful story about language in The Pushcart Prize XI: Best of the Small Presses 1986-87: "Asilomarian Lecture (The Dirmal Life of the Inhabitants)," by Beth Tashery Shannon.

And here's Open Worldcat, which allows for you to find stuff at lots of libraries.