The Harder It Is To Find, The More Valuable It Is
When you are shopping for antiques, the older it is, the more valuable it usually is. However, when you are searching for public domain works, it isn’t necessarily how old it is that adds value to it. How difficult the work is to find or obtain adds value!
You’ve heard ‘if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.’ Well, the same applies to public domain works – if it was easy to find, everybody would have it, and it wouldn’t be worth much. For this reason, you should make it a point to seek out that which isn’t easily obtainable if you want to profit.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t profit from public domain works that are easy to find – it just means that you will profit more from that which is hard to find. Everybody knows that we all want and are willing to pay well for those things which we cannot easily get!
Think of original art pieces, such as the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is in the public domain, and there are many, many copies of it. But the original Mona Lisa – the Mona Lisa that was painted in the 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci, on the canvas that he painted it on, with the oil paints that he painted with, has no monetary value assigned to it. It is priceless – but it resides in a room in the Louvre in Paris that cost 7.5 million dollars to build. People pay just to view the Mona Lisa – and many travel around the world to see it.
While the work that you find probably won’t require a 7.5 million dollar room of its own, you do want to seek out public domain works that either are worth something today, or can be made to be worth something. Depending on what you are hoping to accomplish, it may take quite a bit of research, time, and effort on your part – but it will be well worth it in the end!