Rob,
You are at a point where you have to ask youself whether you are going to be a vintage book collector, or whether you are trying to build a morgue of great old work. And actually, you can do both simultaneously. There are lots of good old book titles out in the world, some still inexpensive and some darned expensive ranging up to $1000 or more. At the same time, you can spend $300 on Dover books and get a wealth of information with booklets in the $5.95-$8.95 range. Dover has also gone digital and has many of their titles in CD or DVD formats, consisting of a small reference book and the CD with the digital files. Be forewarned however, the digital images are usually only bitmaps (tif), relatively small, and not always too clean if enlarged. Same is true if they sell their vectorized formats. I don't find them useable at all, except for reference images. Signs of the Times reprinted a lot of the better old sign books and quite a few of them still show up at reasonable prices. In fact, they reprinted the old Atkinson book you are talking about. Collecting old books (or anything for that matter) can be addictive, costly, and also very rewarding.
http://www.signmuseum.net/library/topbooks.asp
I have to admit, I had a passion for the turn-of-the-century look, represented by Atkinson style images when I compiled the list of 25 books. The list might have been a lot different if I was craving Art Noveau or Art Deco at that particular time. The Atkinson look fit the western look of Jackson Hole much better than Art Deco, which might have better served Miami, FL, for example. I have several bookshelves of valuable old sign books and another bookshelf of reprinted similar books, plus several filled with retro books on topics like vintage matchbook covers, luggage labels, can labels, cigar labels, orange crate labels, and so on and so on.
We've all spent a lot of time in antique book stores. It can be darned fun and rewarding if you can afford it. When we went to Bloomington, Indiana for Gary Anderson's meeting, Darla and I strolled around some of the antique stores and bookshops. I found several vintage sign books right there in Indiana, more or less right under Gary's nose. But then, we have a nice old bookstore in Jackson Hole and I haven't been inside it in 10 years. I always seem to be too busy to go in there.
Going back to your post, I don't think I'd spend the money to have that one rebound. You can find another one if you keep looking. In actuality, it might be a great resource if you wanted to scan any of the images. You could do it without worrying about breaking the spine of a more valuable one.
Best of luck,
Mike Jackson
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads