There is an interesting history to the book Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman… the book was published in 1991 to limited fanfare, but once out of print, die-hard value investors started bidding up the price of used copies (there’s a certain irony in that statement…) and now consider the book a collectible.

Business Week has a brief article called The $700 Used Book:

In the book, he describes buying Texaco (CVX ) bonds in the wake of the company’s sudden 1987 bankruptcy. What prompted the filing was the loss of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit, not insolvency. In the ensuing panic, investors dumped the bonds, and Klarman got them at distressed prices. His bet was that Texaco would make good on the debt, and he was right.

There are three copies available on eBay for as low as $510, so it’s possible that the value of value investing has been falling… though the price for a used copy on Amazon is over $1000.

As Business Week pointed out, libraries that carry the book report that the book often goes missing… as is the case at nearby Duke’s Ford Library (“Missing“).