Why not?

Books are recorded as stolen, anyone who’d buy them would be liable to have them seized by authorities at some point when they try to resel them. As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them

> As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them

Only if they were just a bunch of gold bars when you stole them. If you stole, say, the Swedish crown jewels ( https://www.thelocal.se/20190211/police-confirm-swedens-stol... ), you could pop off all the jewels and melt down the gold for its weight value, but that would be losing almost 100% of the value.

The thieves can't auction off their books by listing them at Christie's. But that's not the same claim as "the thieves can't auction off their books".

Because a large part of the value is to show it off to your friends. "Look I have rare X and you don't". If it is stole though the people are are most likely to be impressed are also the most likely to know it is stolen (they might even check). Many will turn you in because they hope that it ends up in auction in a few years and then they can buy it for their own collection to show off. It might even be more valuable to then because they can say they found it stolen, and then bought it from the rightful owner which adds to the story.