As someone who has collected rare books for decades it is most DEFINITELY NOT MONEY LAUNDERING! A book is rare (hence expensive) whebln it is has few copies availsble AND is in high demand. And what creates high demand? When the INFO in the book is factual and damning, or when the book is a classic (as in a 1st printing of a great book). But say the publish date is 1990, and the book costs 1500 dollars. That means it is a modern book (hence should be lots of copies and inexpensive). So what happened? The info in the book is so dangerous that either the publisher only printed 1 printing (typically a run of 3000 copies) and was bribed/blackmailed/threatened to stop printings, and/or some entity bought up most copies to take it off the market. Definiely not money laundering.