Meet Nate Chang, eHow Expert eHow’s Hobbies, Games & Toys Expert.

An experienced book dealer and online seller provides a glossary of terms for book flaws in this free series of book collecting videos.
All Videos In The Series, "Condition and Value: Guide to Buying Rare Books"
"Hi. My name's Molly Mackey, and I'm with Expert Village. Another common issue is water damage. Now, this book is very heavily water damaged. Mostly you wouldn't be listing something that's this bad. But, sometimes if it's really valuable content, you'll go ahead and still will go through with it. So, you definitely want to mention if the pages are rippled. You want to mention that the pages are rippled, heavy water damage to cover. You could mention if there's any darkening stains. Sometimes that occurs in older books. That type of thing. But, water damage is extremely important to mention because customers do not like that. So, they need to be aware. Also, when you have a cover with damage like this on the front, the technical term that you would use to describe that would be rubbed. Now, this particular one happens to have water damage, but you can see the rubbing to the cloth. And, you definitely want to mention that. So, you would say front cover rubbed heavily. Also, the spine tips, I'm sorry, the book tips are frayed. You definitely want to mention that as well. When the cloth frays, that's a mention."
eHow Hobbies, Games & Toys Editor
Meet Nate Chang, eHow Expert eHow’s Hobbies, Games & Toys Expert.