The existence of distinct variant works is mildly interesting, and so there's (diminishing with volume) value in preserving variation, Big Wave (神奈川沖浪裏)† is a woodblock print, like many modern low scale printing processes for art it produced definitely different items each time, if you've seen Big Wave in a local city gallery and can see another somewhere they're certainly not just the same thing, the way every student's identical print of a famous band poster is.
But on the other hand, most of the value is in the core thing, not the variation. Modulo special cases like the "Wicked Bible" (which has a misprinting in the Ten Commandments) we care about that and not the variation.
It's easy to say that Blade Runner is an important movie. Hard up for preservation capacity if we're choosing obviously Blade Runner beats Ghostbusters 2. Easy. Ghostbusters 2 wasn't a terrible movie but it's no Blade Runner. OK, how about the "Director's Cut"? Sure OK, two copies of Blade Runner. The "Final Cut"? Ugh. Fine, OK, let's have three versions of Blade Runner rather than kick one out for a sub-par sequel to Ghostbusters. There are four more commercially released versions of the movie. That's too many. At some point we should cut our losses and say no, another Blade Runner is not worth it, we'll have Ghostbusters 2 instead thanks.
† That's deliberately not an accurate translation, but we all know what I'm talking about.
But on the other hand, most of the value is in the core thing, not the variation. Modulo special cases like the "Wicked Bible" (which has a misprinting in the Ten Commandments) we care about that and not the variation.
It's easy to say that Blade Runner is an important movie. Hard up for preservation capacity if we're choosing obviously Blade Runner beats Ghostbusters 2. Easy. Ghostbusters 2 wasn't a terrible movie but it's no Blade Runner. OK, how about the "Director's Cut"? Sure OK, two copies of Blade Runner. The "Final Cut"? Ugh. Fine, OK, let's have three versions of Blade Runner rather than kick one out for a sub-par sequel to Ghostbusters. There are four more commercially released versions of the movie. That's too many. At some point we should cut our losses and say no, another Blade Runner is not worth it, we'll have Ghostbusters 2 instead thanks.
† That's deliberately not an accurate translation, but we all know what I'm talking about.