The Week ending October 24, 2010

Twenty-four Sales Archived

On October 7th we pointed Americana Exchange to a new group of servers. The intentions were good but the execution poor. Ten days later we pointed back to the old servers. Currently we are operating on the old servers and hosting the new AE at www.wikibiblio.com. Members with membership credentials can log-on to either site. They are both operating.

On the current site we continue to build out the AED. The number of records is currently 2,862,856. Over the past year we added 750,000 records as we piece together a continuous history of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera over the past 110 years. This information is important because we are working on probability of reappearance calculations to accompany the current valuation estimates we introduced more than five years ago. Decisions about buying are based on the example, price and probability another copy will come along. Our database, now approaching three million records, provides the basis for these calculations. This feature will be installed on the new site later this fall.

The new site employs five servers, three more than currently.

In this week's auction update we are reporting 24 sales. The total lots offered was 12,158, the total sold 8,764 or 72%. Overall these sales raised $21,116,370 against the aggregate high estimate of $24,366,849.

Christies did exceedingly well with photography in New York on the 6th. Bloomsbury, after a recent dry spell, sold the Richard Harris Collection of Natural History & Colourplate Books for $3.6 million in New York on the 13th. Ninety percent of the lots sold, an exceptional performance.

Bruce McKinney
AE