Buying old novels for their illustrations

As a person who enjoys illustration, I sometimes buy old, damaged
books simply to remove the plates..   Of course, I am only talking
about the type of  book you find at used bookdealers for a few dollars,
at most,  because the cover is such bad shape that most people won't
even consider buying the book.

Primarily, I am referring to novels, because back around the
beginning of the  20th century, and for the next couple of decades,
novels often were illustrated.   Many were illustrated by the best
illustrators of the day, yet those are people it is very difficult  to find
books about, such as Harrison Fisher, Louis Loeb, Coles Phillips,
Gordon Grant, Frederick Dorr Steele, and others.    (I need to thank
Walt Reed's THE ILLUSTRATOR IN AMERICA for even making me
aware of most of the artists I refer to here.    While that volume is
wonderful, it also frustrates me somewhat, because it could only
give a very small sample of the work of each illustrator included.)
Since I have a special fondness for well-down ink drawings, a
favorite illustrator of mine is Charles S. Chapman.  Some of the
drawings he did for rather vapid popular novels are stunning.

While some people refuse to break up a book on principles, there
are couple of reasons I think my approach here is sound.    In the
first place, most of the illustraters I refer to were far better at what
they did, and have proved far more enduring than the authors of the
popular novels they illustrated.

Loeb,  for instance, illustrated historical novels that most readers today
would find to be soporific, at best. Yet for those who enjoy artistic
visions
of ancient scenes, Loeb's pictures are as fascinating as many pictures
on the same topic by the pre-Raphealites.

On the other hand,  Harrison Fisher illustrated frothy, popular novels that
 strike most readers today as hopelessly boring, even for light reading,
yet Fisher himself seems to have captured some timeless aspects of
American popular culture.

While we are talking about breaking up damaged books for
 illustrations, we are not referring to literary classics,   then.
On  top of that, I simply don't like to keep books with horrible-
looking covers.   I feel I have better uses for shelf space.  As
a result, removing and scrapbooking illustrations from books
that fall into the above category seems wise.   Anyone else do
this?