About
Rebecca Romney is a rare book dealer, appraiser, and author.
She is the co-founder of Type Punch Matrix, a Washington DC-area rare book firm specializing in pivotal works from every field.
Rebecca is active on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok.
Photograph by Dave Pappas
Rebecca’s Rare Book Company
Over the course of her career, Rebecca has sold Shakespeare Folios, first editions of Newton's Principia Mathematica and Darwin's Origin of Species, and individual leaves from the Gutenberg Bible.
She offers consultations for her clients at Type Punch Matrix, where book collectors can find rare, collectible, vintage and deluxe editions of a wide range of books.
Rebecca has been in the trade since 2007, when she was hired by Bauman Rare Books for their new location in Las Vegas. In 2010, she became manager of that gallery. She eventually moved to Philadelphia to manage the central operations of the firm, where she also handled the acquisition of libraries and oversaw catalogue production. After a stint at the Brooklyn-based Honey & Wax Booksellers (where she co-founded a book collecting prize), she founded her own rare book firm, Type Punch Matrix, in the Washington DC area.
Learn more about the basics of rare books:
Rebecca began appearing on the HISTORY Channel’s television show Pawn Stars as the rare book specialist in 2011. Despite the distance, she still films for the show when she visits Las Vegas, making her one of the longest running specialists (and the only regular woman specialist) on the show.
Watch a compilation of her appearances in Season 14:
In 2017, Rebecca published her first book: Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History. With mentions in the New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Forbes, the book has been called “a rousing read told in a breezy, often laugh-out-loud funny manner. Who knew the history of books and printing could be this much fun?” (Popmatters). Available at Amazon or your local independent bookstores and public libraries. Rebecca also writes for online platforms such as Literary Hub, CrimeReads, BoingBoing, and Mental Floss.
In 2019, Rebecca was featured in The Booksellers, a documentary with executive producer Parker Posey about the rare book trade in New York that premiered at New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Variety's review of the film called her a "cockeyed optimist of bibliophilia" with terrifying accuracy.
Rebecca is the co-founder and one of the judges the Honey & Wax Prize, an annual award for an outstanding book collection built by a woman, age 30 or younger, living in the United States. The Paris Review profiled the latest winners.
As a researcher & collector, Rebecca's personal interests lie in genre fiction, especially science fiction, fantasy, & romance. In 2019 she wrote the foreword to the reissue of The Judas Rose by the Feminist Press.
In 2020, she edited an anthology of speculative fiction stories first published as early as 1838 that capture some aspect of life today. The collection was published in a gorgeous edition by Hingston & Olson:
Rebecca is one of the nation’s leading rare book dealers with a specialty in romance novels. Learn more about why collecting in this genre is important and to join the burgeoning movement to preserve romance history.
Those interested in casual appraisals will find more information on the Appraisals page.
Media and business inquiries should correspond through Rebecca’s company, Type Punch Matrix.