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‘‘It comes down to supply and demand,” Moursund said.

His point was illustrated at the appraisal when a woman presented Moursund with a Bible. The late19th-century book was leather with a gold plated lock around the binding, and the owner expected its worth to be significant. Moursund quickly removed any doubt from her mind.

‘‘There were probably about 10 million of these printed,” Moursund said. ‘‘It’s not really worth anything, financially at least.”

Moursund often stresses that despite the fact that a book may not be worth a significant amount monetarily, it is rarely the money that matters.

‘‘If you enjoyed the book, who cares how much it’s worth?” he said.

For those interested in rare book sales, there is one characteristic that Moursund stresses more than anything: condition.

The age and edition, according to Moursund, are secondary to the condition of the book. He illustrates his point with what many consider the Great American Novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘‘The Great Gatsby.”

‘‘If you have a first edition of that book, in poor condition, without a dust jacket, it’s probably worth around $100,” he said. ‘‘If you have the same edition in good condition, with a dust jacket, the book can bring in $100,000. Condition matters that much.”

The appraisal was just one part of the annual Bethesda Literary Festival held this past weekend and that brought more than 6,500 people out to events, including an American Girls party and poetry slams, according to Stephanie Coppula, director of Marketing and Communications for Bethesda Urban Partnership, a nonprofit that promotes and maintains downtown Bethesda, which sponsored the event.

‘‘It was good to see people come inside and see the authors and enjoy the festival despite how nice it was outside,” Coppula said.

Some of the most attended events at this year’s Literary Festival included talks by ABC News political commentator Cokie Roberts and a talk by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, who co-wrote the book ‘‘Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.”

The appraisal at the Literary Festival brought more than a dozen collectors to Moursund.

Unfortunately for the attendees, almost no one left happy. A 1940 copy of Richard Wright’s ‘‘Native Son” was appraised at a meager $10, while older copies of Oscar Wilde’s ‘‘Salome” and Mary Baker Eddy’s ‘‘Science And Health, With Key To The Scriptures,” the founding text of the Christian Science movement, went for even less.

Moursund told the crowd that in addition to the book’s condition, a lot of the value is dependent upon whether a particular author is ‘‘collectable.”

‘‘Jane Austen is a very collected author, as are works from the Harlem Renaissance era,” Moursund said. ‘‘But someone like Oliver Wendell Holmes is not very collected. It comes down again to a demand for the product.”

One bright point was the collection of Joel Sparks, a writer from Silver Spring. While the collection wasn’t financially monumental, its historic and scholarly implications could be. Sparks brought a 1916, 11-volume set of O. Henry short stories to the appraisal, along with the 1936 biography of O. Henry, ‘‘The Quiet Lodger of Irving Place,” written by his friend William Wash Williams. After purchasing the set at a Bethesda bookstore, he noticed word-for-word similarities between the biography and penciled notes in the backs of each book in the set. Sparks believes it is proof that his O. Henry set once belonged to Williams. He brought the set to ask Moursund what to do with it.

‘‘I thought I would come to Andy (Moursund) and see if he had any ideas of what I should do with it,” Sparks said.

Moursund suggested looking into museums and scholarly collections in hopes of finding a home for the interesting collection. Sparks agreed.

‘‘I already tried to contact Princeton University, who has a collection of O. Henry’s works, but they didn’t seem interested,” Sparks said. ‘‘My next step is to contact the O. Henry Museum in Austin, Texas. I figure it has to have some scholarly significance to someone.”

While no one left the appraisal significantly richer, everyone learned a lesson about rare books: There is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

‘‘Unless you really know what you’re doing,” Moursund said, ‘‘you shouldn’t be selling rare books. It’s a tricky field.”