Rare and out of print does not mean important or valuable.

It doesn't automatically mean pointless or worthless, either. And it's too late to judge either way once it's been destroyed.

Usually it means the opposite. Books that are old and valuable tend to be out of copyright, so they do see new printing runs.

	▲	squidbeak 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The British Library has a large quantity of books that have literary, academic, cultural or bibliopolical significance but are too niche to ever see print new print runs. This idea that there can only be merit in a work if it's commercially viable is incredibly ignorant, and if that becomes the standard for whether a work is preserved or not, we stand to lose a great deal of our cultural heritage.