Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of most expensive books and manuscripts/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 10 September 2022 (UTC) .

List of most expensive books and manuscripts (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured list candidates/List of most expensive books and manuscripts/archive1

Nominator(s): Hochithecreator (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because it is a well written, well cited article that clearly and with readable prose brings together a lot of information on an important topic that is not available to my knowledge anywhere else on the internet (or at least anywhere of general accessibility) to the same degree of detail and comprehensive coverage. In fact, several of the first results if you google "most expensive books" appear to be direct cribs of the article, though now somewhat out of date. For instance this article is the only place that mentions that the first printing of the Constitution of the United States is now the most expensive. Hochithecreator (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Comments

• The article starts with "This is a list of....", which has long been deprecated as a way to start an article (in the same way that an article which was not a list would never start with "this is an article about....."). You should find a more engaging opening sentence. I'd also remove the other semi-meta references to "this list" from later in the lead
• Refs column would look better centred, and I would make the heading Ref(s) as most rows only have one
• Where the description consists of only one sentence fragment eg "Two letters, sold as a set from Yuan dynasty artist Zhao Mengfu to his friend." there should be no full stop. If there are multiple sentences or sentence fragments then full stops are needed.
• "First issue of the first Superman comic book series" - arguably Action Comics was the first Superman series, so maybe clarify as "First issue of the first dedicated Superman comic book series" or similar
• "Illuminated Book of hours on vellum" - no need for capital B
• "First appearance of Superman" - Superman wikilinked on second mention but not first
• "Autograph manuscript" - inconsistently wikilinked/not wikilinked
• Same with "book of hours"
• "Book of Hours originally owned by Galeazzo Maria Sforza" - no reason for capital H
• Marvel Comics links to the company rather than the specific comic, the article for which is at Marvel Mystery Comics. Also, there should probably be a # in front of the 1 to be consistent with the earlier listing of Action Comics #1
• Detective Comics 27 needs # as above
• Also it has its own article at Detective Comics 27 to link to
• That's what I got -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:05, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Comments

• Also: Martin Goodman was the publisher of Marvel Comics #1, not the author. Might be more consistent to credit Carl Burgos and Bill Everett, who did the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner stories respectively. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Comments

A really interesting list, but shouldn't it be called something like "List of printed books and other documents which have sold for more than US$1 million"? A copy of the Codex Sinaiticus was bought for the British Museum for £100,000 in 1933 which, with inflation, surely makes it more expensive than some of the items on the list, but it fails to meet the criterion of costing more than $1m. Also, I don't mind for an article like this that it "may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness" (e.g. we could not include unreported private sales), but how can readers be confident about the list being a reasonably complete one of publicly known sales? Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:12, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

• Tables need captions, which allow screen reader software to jump straight to named tables without having to read out all of the text before it each time. Visual captions can be added by putting |+ caption_text as the first line of the table code; if that caption would duplicate a nearby section header, you can make it screen-reader-only by putting |+ {{sronly|caption_text}} instead.
• Tables need column scopes for all column header cells, which in combination with row scopes lets screen reader software accurately determine and read out the headers for each cell of a data table. Column scopes can be added by adding !scope=col to each header cell, e.g. !rowspan=2|Author becomes !scope=col rowspan=2|Author. If the cell spans multiple columns with a colspan, then use !scope=colgroup instead.
• Tables need row scopes on the "primary" column for each row, which in combination with column scopes lets screen reader software accurately determine and read out the headers for each cell of a data table. Row scopes can be added by adding !scope=row to each primary cell, e.g. |'']'' becomes !scope=row |'']''. If the cell spans multiple rows with a rowspan, then use !scope=rowgroup instead. Note: This would make your third column the "primary", which is correct since it's the one that "defines" the row- the first row is the row for the Constitution, not the row for "43.2 million". If this looks odd to you, it would be best solved by moving the title of the work over to the first column, not the third.
• Please see MOS:DTAB for example table code if this isn't clear. I don't return to these reviews until the nomination is ready to close, so ping me if you have any questions. --PresN 18:06, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Comments

• I realise that there has been a lot of work done here, but I worry this treads into original research. Were it a list of documents sold for more than US$1 million it would be very clear. The difficulty is how does one arrive at a contemporary value to rank the documents, without engaging in original research? The conversions to current value all use the {{Inflation}} template, however, it seems to me that there are two problems with the use of that template. First, that template indicates changes in price for consumer goods, it is not for use in regards to capital goods. That problem cannot be overcome by using the GDP inflator, which is for use for assets/capital goods, but cannot be used for change in value for collectible items which are notoriously fluid, rather a specific index informed by asset pricing theory in collectibles is needed. The second problem is the sale prices are not universally in US$ - a item purchased in one market in-/de-flates at different levels than that purchased in another (and these items have all realised their values, ie were sold, in different countries). Again, how to account for exchange rate change? How to account for differences between prices realised in national markets versus an international market? Unless there is a source that can give a recent value for all these items, (or possibly an agreed index, reliably sourced, to apply to the sale prices), the adjusted contemporary prices/value all appear to me as original research. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 23:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@Hochithecreator: this nomination has been here for almost two months, and you've not responded to any comments. Are you still pursuing an FL here? Aza24 (talk) 23:03, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Archiving, nominator appears to have abandoned this nomination. --PresN 20:08, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.