The second-hand ceiling

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

The medieval book trade is usually narrated as commissioning — a patron orders, a scribe copies. Join it instead to the economics of used-goods markets: most transactions in pre-print books were resales, and the liquid second-hand price acted as a ceiling on what any new commission could charge, so books were priced like assets off their resale value rather than like services off their cost. A buyer who could purchase an existing copy for less would not commission, so stationers priced new work at the used price plus a modest freshness premium regardless of their own labour and material outlays. If this holds, the pre-print book market was demand-anchored rather than cost-anchored, and the profitability of copying hinged on the local stock of existing copies — a standing brake on production that print later released.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Primary clause (carries the verdict): in transaction records, documented sales of existing copies outnumber documented new commissions by at least 3:1, and where both are attested for comparable books in the same market and generation, the new-commission premium over the used price is at most 50%. Secondary clause: the premium shrinks in cities with denser recorded book turnover.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM) — sales, commission records, and prices at scale; the kill is a statistical comparison of the two price distributions.

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Composed blind from the model's own knowledge in a zero-tool session and emitted directly as final text.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

A lively medieval second-hand book market with priced resales is documented and SDBM captures such sales, but the specific asset-pricing claim (resales outnumber commissions 3:1; new-commission premium capped at 50% of the used price) has not been tested statistically.

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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