All volumes reproduced in monochrome on high quality glossy paper a selection of about 100 limited edition prints published during the preceding year.
This constitutes an important record of the work of many artists which, until the print boom ended in around 1930, were seen as an investment and were the subject of substantial trading and inflated prices.
For example, an etching entitled Mersea, Sunset by James McBey, whose work was highly sought after in the 1920s, was issued to subscribers in an edition of 76 artist's proofs in 1926 at a price of 10 guineas.
[3] A proof of this print from the edition of 76 was sold at auction at Sotheby's in December of the same year for just under 105 guineas, a ten times higher price.
[5] Fine Prints of the Year continued as a record of the work of etchers and engravers until the sixteenth and last annual volume for 1938,[6] just before the start of the Second World War in Europe brought about rationing of paper and presumably put an end to the series.