The collector in me wants me to start up a collection of first edition hardcover fiction books. I don't care if the books are autographed, etc. I just want reasonably priced first edition hardcovers of classic books of the 20th century and possibly late 19th century. The maximum amount of money I'd pay on a first-edition hardcover book is probably $50, but I know some books, especially ones from the 19th century, probably wouldn't be able to be purchased for this price.

I currently purchase most of my first-edition hardcover books from Amazon.ca, but there must be other great sites out there for getting used hardcover books for a reasonable price.

Can you recommend sites, please?

http://www.abe.com
and
http://www.alibris.com

there's a lot of undercutting so sometimes you'll be able to find a good deal

Ebay, half.com, AbeBooks...

Libraries occasionally get rid of their old books, but they tend to be beat to shit so it's probably not the best option.

You should buy A Game of Thrones in first edition hard cover. I believe it's around $600 for a signed copy, $300 for unsigned.

I found it on Ebay.ca for about $40 CAD with shipping. Then there's another copy which is $300.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/George-R-R-Martin-GA ... tion_Books

http://cgi.ebay.ca/GAME-THRONES-George- ... ollectible

Not sure if the first is a first printing or not.

I can usually find early hardcover printings of stuff written from the 1960s until the 1980s for $60 or less with shipping on Ebay.ca. I actually don't care if a printing is the very first or not as long as it's an early and is hardcover.

I spent about an hour looking up good resources for finding rare early hardcover editions of books. In order, the best seem to be: BookFinder (a search engine which searches through numerous online bookstores), AbeBooks (not everything on AbeBooks gets indexed on BookFinder), and Ebay.

Buying from local bookstores/libraries is not an option since I don't live near any good ones.