If you care only about the history embodied by a map rather than its aesthetics, you can save money by settling for a beat-up old map, although they are hard to resell. If you don't care about colorful flourishes, you can save money with an uncolored map. Don't Quibble Chris also recommends that map buyers today should not quibble about prices. Maps are also rising dramatically in price, so even if you overpay slightly today, your map is likely to be worth more tomorrow. One of the reasons that map prices are climbing, Chris believes, is the accessibility of maps.
People can get a better sense of what's out there.
If you want to collect along the cutting edge of map collecting, consider road and subway maps. That's an important question because maps are often mounted on acidic paper or glued on to acidic boards. Last but not least, Chris recommends that all novice collectors get a written guarantee of what you are buying. That way you can return something that you later discover is not what the seller marketed, which is one more reason to keep learning about maps. One of the classics in the field, this readable history of cartography focuses on the process and business of cartography rather than on maps themselves.