What's the most you've paid for an old paperback?

[pulphack]

I think the most I've paid is a tenner - but even then, I had another for £3.50 and the dealer in question threw that in gratis (admittedly, it was Milan, so he was inclined to be decent like that) so I suppose it was only £6.50 in effect. I've also paid around a tenner in dollar equivalents for three Jeff Rovin Manor titles and Len Levinson's 'Last Buffoon' (which was worth three times the price at least as a document of being a paperback hack), and with postage I guess they were dearer. There's something in me that baulks at paying over a tenner for something that might be too fragile even to read safely (you know how flimsy old paperbacks can be). Just not a serious collector, really. Either that or I'm just tight.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I just looked for Jean Ray there and aside from Malpertuis, there is Ghouls In My Grave, a seemingly rare Midnight House book called My Own Private Spectres and a cheap e-book called Graveyard Spectres. There seems to be loads of untranslated stuff.

[humgoo]

Lovely book-hunting vignette by Will "Paperbacks from Hell" Errickson on his blog:

[...] suddenly I was face to face with the gaping grinning skull adorning the purple cover of Ghouls in My Grave, a thin 1965 paperback from Berkley Medallion, by Belgian author Jean Ray. Huzzah! I'd only been looking for this guy for decades! Sure, I'd seen it online, at pretty high prices, and who knows in what condition it was actually in, but now I had it in my hands. It was priced at $40, which is about the very highest I will go on vintage paperbacks, but I felt fate and good luck were at work here, and who am I to blow against the wind?

Maybe a moment of weakness, but totally understandable!

[flavo5000]

I think the most I've ever spent on a vintage paperback was Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit for somewhere around $25US.  I'm reading through all of Stephen Jones & Kim Newman's two 100/Another 100 Horror Books lists, and it was one of the very few I hadn't been able to stumble across cheaply somewhere.  

[helrunar]

I spent around $40 (maybe a bit more) on a tacky old Stewart Farrar novel, The Serpent of Lilith (published in some edition or other as by Margot Villiers--wonder if he thought of her as Dame Barbara Cartland's evil twin sister), because the cover was fabulous and I wanted something fun and Witchy to savor. And I thought the money well spent; it was all very Hammer horror, and quite a bit of fun.

Hel.

[jamesdoig]

From time to time I spend $15-$20 for a paperback on ebay (the killer is always postage) for something I really want, but I try to hold off.

[Swampirella]

The most I've spent was about $40 including shipping on Chetwynd-Hayes "Terror By Night". I still can't believe I spent that much, but it was more or less worth it.