Bats seem to have come down a bit to around  £130, I have seen a lot of these books on sale and it looks like the value has come down from recent highs but has stayed noticably higher than any of its neighbours. Similarly Ireland (85) seems to have plateaued around the £120 mark. Reptiles & Amphibians has crept up in value, and similarly Moths (90) has made a recent charge and is now at the £100 mark.

Of the more recent volumes,Bumblebees seems to stand out as becoming more pricey. I have no idea why. Perhaps a similar reason to that often given to explain Bats' high price. ie. interest as the leading book on the subject. but this is pure guesswork. Perhaps it has spiked because it is no longer available. Can anyone shed light on this? 

Bumblebees 40

Dragonflies 41

seem to be the silver 3 before the golden 13

also seems to a lot of interest in

Bumblebees 98

There seems to be a raft of faded spine Golden 13s going for a lot less than usual on ebay. This raises an interesting question. While I would always try to eventually have an unfaded Golden 13 book in my collection, I wonder if I would rather have a POD than a faded original.

a whole set of PODs would be quite an astronomical sum of money & given that I need only the following to complete the set, it would be better spending the money on the originals.

1	Butterflies	E. B. Ford	1945
2	British Game	Vesey-Fitzgerald, B.	1946
4	Britain's Structure and Scenery	Dudley Stamp, L.	1946
25	The Sea Coast	Steers, J.A.	1953
26	The Weald	Wooldridge, S.W. & Goldring, F.	1953
27	Dartmoor	Harvey, L.A. & St Leger Gordon, D.	1953
28	Sea-Birds	Fisher, James & Lockley, R.M.	1954
29	The World of the Honeybee	Butler, C.G.	1954
32	Trees, Woods and Man	Edlin, H.L.	1956
35	The World of the Soil	Russell, E.J.	1957
38	The World of Spiders	W.S. Bristowe	1958
42	Fossils	Swinnerton, H.H.	1960
44	The Peak District	Edwards, K.C.	1962
45	The Common Lands of England and Wales	Hoskins, W.G. & Dudley Stamp, L.	1963
46	The Broads	Ellis, A.E.	1965
65	Waders	Hale, W.G.	1980
69	Reptiles and Amphibians in Britain	Frazer, D.	1983
70	The Natural History of Orkney	R. J. Berry	1985
71	British Warblers	Simms, E.	1985
78	British Larks, Pipits and Wagtails	Simms, E.	1992
80	Wild and Garden Plants	Walters, M.	1993
81	Ladybirds	Mike Majerus	1994

I don't follow the prices at private booksellers or auctions, but a copy of British Warblers with a badly faded spine was sold on eBay last week for a cool £1,755.55, so the prices are not that far below their highs.   There's another copy on eBay at the moment with unfaded dustwrapper at £2,500 and an unfaded copy of Orkney at £2,750 ... now don't all rush now ;-)

I accept neither has been sold and they've both been relisted at least once, so perhaps it's not a true guide but some copies are still selling at silly prices.   Seems like the availability of POD copies hasn't daunted the serious collector after all.

Bill