Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2004 Issue
December Auctions <br>Lost in the Moment
At Bloomsbury on the 14th, lot 446 is a rare Oscar Wilde New Haven ephemera.
On the 6th there is the Important Medical and Scientific Books from the collection of Irwin J. Pincus at Christies in New York.
By the 9th if you haven't yet won any lots Waverly welcomes you to their December sale. Children's books are the largest part. For Dr. Suess fans and collectors there are 229 lots. If you are a large-hearted Dr. Suess fan you are at the right place. Grab a Who-pastry and buy everything right down to the hooks and wire. Then rush home to carve the roast beast.
On the 14th we begin to run the December auction gauntlet, eleven sales between Tuesday the 14th and Friday the 17th. If you plan to attend all of them I want to wish you lots of luck. You'll start the 14th in London running between Bonhams and Bloomsbury and then jet to Boston, or Worcester if it's a private jet, where in either case you'll need a motorcade to arrive on time at New England Book Auction's sale which begins promptly at 6:30. Then it's back to Europe on a night flight for three sales on Thursday, the 15th: Dominic Winter in Wiltshire, UK, the Dorotheum in Vienna and Sotheby's Books and Manuscripts in Paris. On Thursday the 16th you may end up wishing you left bids yesterday for Dominic Winter's second sale; Modern first editions, children's and illustrated books and Sotheby's London sale of English Literature, History & Children's Books and Illustrations because you are now facing a flight to San Francisco where PBA's sale of The Golfing Library of Hal Gevertz will be getting underway. Fortunately, at PBA, you can bid online but you'll still have to convince the pilot it's important. Just tell him you are a book-eccentric. Please write down what he says. We'll all want to hear it. After the sale, take a peek at the Golden Gate Bridge from the air as you head toward 30,000 feet because, although you are tired, you need to fly to New York. Before you doze off you'll need to ask the pilot to patch you through by air-phone to Christie's Rome for the Libri e Stampe sale because you are not going to make it in person. This is quickly becoming auction triage but it is both honorable and acceptable. No one else has ever tried to do what you are now doing [and perhaps for good reason!]. Now, between midnight and 6:00 am, is the best time to get from the New York airports into the city. During certain daylight hours the drive in can take longer than your flight. Stay at a nice New York hotel to prepare for Christie's Friday sale. It's the appropriate finale to a wild week: Rock & Roll and Entertainment Memorabilia. If you can remember please place a bid for me on the Buddy Holly biology test. The sale starts at 10:00 am. It's all do-able: barely.
Don't forget to keep your receipts. Have the auctioneers at each sale sign your catalogues. Keep them in pristine condition. After the sale all the material will be bound in sumptuous uniform leather. All newspaper articles and magazine articles about your saga should be laid in custom glassine folders. All bidding notes and purchase receipts should be included.
