You might laugh, but I buy the cheapest, most battered books from Amazon. I kinda like the patina of a well-used book, and let the people who like pristine ones buy the others! My LotR trilogy is one of my valued possessions: dirty, smudged, creased, battered, yellowed, dogeared, it's awesome. They've clearly been enjoyed by their previous owner(s).

Sadly, the local used bookstore tries hard to stock books only in "like new" condition. This removes the best "tell" for if the book is good or not - if it looks well-used, it's probably a great book.

I don’t mind patina, but it took my 3 tries to get an acceptable copy of of a rare naval history book.

The first arrived with the spine totally destroyed (some pages literally hanging on my a thread) and the second was shipped in such a large box that it came open during shipping, and every single page had a massive hard crease at varying angles.

Amazon handled it far as refunds, but it still took over a month, and that’s now 2 less copies of that book in existence, and it’s not exactly common.

This is a book that goes for $100+ even well used

I have some old naval books, so I'm curious of the title of yours.

Got a couple shelf’s of em, but the book in question is Breyer - Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970

Useful because it (brief, but extant) coverage of nations like Brazil, Spain, and Greece, which don’t tend to get much coverage.

Wow, looks like a sweet book!

I have many, too, including the set "History of United States Naval Operations in World War II" by Morison.

I’ve been tempted by that one too… but I got too many I haven’t read already :)

Norman Friedman is excellent, very engineering heavy.