The world of book, manuscript, map and ephemera auctions has long been dominated by the major cities in the United States and Europe. It’s been this way so long it feels natural, even inevitable. Over the past decade though there has been a broad proliferation of houses that, while continuing to be near major cities, are filling the interstices and increasingly demonstrating strength. The trend is broad and deep. In looking at the December auction schedule I’m struck by the solid strength of the offers across the entire field. True, this month we don’t/won’t have the majestic high fliers that Sotheby’s has sold with exceptional success the past few years but we will experience strength across the spectrum and this means great material appearing consistently within the more than 80 auctions scheduled.
It is difficult, even unfair to rank these sales, because if the material that consumes you is in a particular sale, that sale for you is the important sale. For myself important material is up for bid in four different sales, this in itself a first as I’m often lucky to find a single item that fits my criteria.
This suggests a certain realignment of the stars, an increase in the number of houses selling exceptional material and an increasingly apparent trend toward lower estimates that encourage the wider bidding that moves outcomes well beyond the lot reserves that can not legally be higher than the low estimate. It’s a healthy trend.
This said, perhaps the most interesting sale in December is The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector at Profiles in History in Calabasas in southern California. The collector-consignor is probably Victor Niederhoffer based on material he is known to own that is being offered. The descriptive term distinguished is a low barrier term used more widely in the field than is appropriate. For this sale it absolutely applies.
The index of lots reads like a who’s who and what’s what of both American and world history. Beyond the connections there is also the reality that many of the items are very important. This is not a tour of thinly connected association copies. There is real collector intelligence on display here.
To this I’ll add that the estimates are generally low and the low estimate the minimum price at which the lot will change hands. Therefore a high percentage of the lots will sell.
This said, the conventional wisdom is that when selling in December, it’s best to sell in early December before institutional and collector money has been spent. This sale will test that theory, as it is one of the last sales of the year. It’s on the 18th. If at that point in the month you have any money left and the fiscal cliff has not opened into the fiscal chasm you should give the catalogue, online or on paper, a careful look.
The total of the low estimates that are also the starting bids is $4.536 million, the total of the high estimates $6,922,000. If the sale gets traction it could be the largest-by-dollars sale of the month, even the year.
To appreciate this sale you have to browse the catalogue. Links below will bring it up. Here is a list of subjects from the catalogue index of all 297 lots:
[Battle of Bunker Hill] Martin Gay
[Battle of Little Big Horn] Josiah Chance
[Inquisition of Mexico and Florida]
[South Sea Company]
[Titanic, R.M.S.]
[U. S. S. Constitution]
Adams, John
Adams, John Quincy
Adams, Samuel
Alcott, Louisa May
American All-Stars
Andersen, Hans Christian
Anderson, Robert
Armstrong, Louis
Armstrong, Neil A.
Audubon, John James
Baum, L. Frank
Beethoven, Ludwig von
Bell, Alexander Graham
Berlioz, Hector
Blake, Eubie
Boswell, James
Boyle, Robert
Bradbury, Ray
Brahms, Johannes
Brown, John
Calder, Alexander
Catherine II (Catherine the Great)
Catherine de’ Medici
Catlin, George
Chandler, Raymond
Churchill, Winston
Clemens, Samuel L. (“Mark Twain”)
Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici)
Clinton, George
Cobb, Tyrus Raymond “Ty”
Cody, William F. (“Buffalo Bill”)
Colt, Samuel
Conrad, Joseph
Cooper, J. Fennimore
Cornwallis, Charles
Coryate, Thomas
Curie, Marie
Curie, Pierre
Darrow, Clarence
Darwin, Charles
David, Jacques Louis
Davis, Jefferson
DeForest, Lee
DiMaggio, Joseph
Disney, Walt
Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (“Lewis Carroll”)
Donizetti, Gaetano
Dvorak, Anton
Edison, Thomas
Einstein, Albert
Eisenhower, Dwight D
Ellery, William
Emmerson, Ralph Waldo
Ferdinand V, King of Spain
Fermi, Enrico
Fillmore, Millard
Fischer, Bobby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Flaubert, Gustave
Flynn, Errol
Ford, Gerald R.
Forrest, Nathan Bedford
Francis I, King of France
Franklin, Benjamin
Freud, Sigmund
Galilei, Galileo
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
Gauguin, Paul
Gehrig, Lou
George III, King of England
Gerry, Elbridge
Gershwin, George
Grant, Ulysses S.
Greene, Nathanael
Hammerstein, Oscar, II
Hancock, John
Hemingway, Ernest
Henry II, King of France
Henry VII, King of England
Henry, Patrick
Herschel, John Frederick William
Hesse, Hermann
Hilton, James
Holiday, Billie (Eleanora Fagan)
Houdini, Harry
Houston, Samuel
Hugo, Victor
Hume, David
Jackson, Thomas J. (“Stonewall”)
James, Frank
Jay, John
Jefferson, Thomas
Jung, Carl. G
Kennedy, Edward M.
Kennedy, Jacqueline
Kern, Jerome David & Hammerstein, Oscar, II.
Key, Francis Scott
King, Martin Luther
Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lee, Richard Henry
Lee, Robert E.
Lehar, Franz
Lennon, John
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Mary
Lindbergh, Anne Spencer Morrow
Linnaeus, Carolus
Liszt, Franz
Livingstone, David
Locke, John
London, Jack
Longfellow, Henry W.
Louis XVI, King of France
Lowe, Sir Hudson
MacArthur, Douglas
Madison, James
Malcolm X [Little, Malcolm]
Marx, Karl (Heinrich)
Mata-Hari
Mazarin, Jules
Medieval Tally Sticks
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix
Millet, Jean Francois
Mitchell, Margaret
Monet, Claude
Monroe, James
Monroe, Marilyn
More, Thomas
Morland, Samuel
Morris, Robert
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
Napoleon I
Napoleon I and Empress Josephine
Nelson, Horatio
Newton, Sir Isaac
Nobel, Alfred
Nobel Prize Collection
Paine, Thomas
Parrish, Maxfield
Pasteur, Louis
Patton, George S.
Peter I (Peter the Great)
Pickering, Timothy
Pissarro, Camille
Poe, Edgar Allen
Porter, Cole
Puccini, Giacomo
Rand, Ayn
Reagan, Ronald
Revere, Paul
Rochambeau, Comte de.
Rodney, Caesar
Rommel, Erwin
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Rousseau, Jean Jacques
Rush, Benjamin
Ruth, George Herman “Babe”
Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de.
Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de.
Schumann, Robert
Seward, William Henry
Shakespeare, William
Smith, Adam
Stanley, Henry M.
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Stroud, Robert (“Birdman of Alcatraz”)
Szilard, Leo
Taylor, Zachary
Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Thoreau, Henry
Thornton, William
Tolkien, J.R.R.
Tyler, John
Valentino, Rudolph
Van Gogh, Vincent
Verdi, Giuseppe
Villa, Francisco (“Pancho”)
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet
Wagner, Richard
Warren, James
Washington, George
Weill, Kurt
Wesley, John
Whitman, Walt
Whitney, Eli.
Wright, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Wilbur
To search this sale and all others upcoming and now posted on AE select Upcoming Auctions at the top of any AE page and search your terms. Lots are updated daily.
Here is a link to Profiles in History:
http://www.profilesinhistory.com/auctions/extraordinary-document-auction/
