-
Dominic Winter Auctioneers
May 14
Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & ExplorationDominic Winter, May 14: (Choiseul-Gouffier, Marie). Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece, 2 vols, 1st edition, 1782-1822. £2,000-3,000Dominic Winter, May 14: Gentlemen's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, by Sylvanus Urban, 11 volumes. £700-1,000Dominic Winter, May 14: Shackleton (Ernest). The Heart of the Antarctic, 2 vols, 1st ed, presentation copy, 1909. £2,000-3,000Dominic Winter Auctioneers
May 14
Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & ExplorationDominic Winter, May 14: Drayton (Michael). Poly Olbion..., London: 1622. £2,000-3,000Dominic Winter, May 14: Scheuchzer (Johann Jacob). Ouresiphoites Helveticus, 4 parts in 1, 2nd ed, 1723. £3,000-4,000Dominic Winter, May 14: Roberts (Henry, after). Chart of the NW Coast of America and NE Coast of Asia ..., [1784]. £500-800Dominic Winter Auctioneers
May 14
Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & ExplorationDominic Winter, May 14: World. Maffei (Giovanni), Indiarum orientalium Occidentaliumque Descriptio..., 1589. £1,200-1,500Dominic Winter, May 14: World. Ortelius (Abraham), Typus Orbis Terrarum, [1598]. £2,000-3,000Dominic Winter, May 14: Bible [English]. [The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New..., 1613]. £2,000-3,000Dominic Winter Auctioneers
May 14
Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & ExplorationDominic Winter, May 14: Taylor (John). All the Workes of John Taylor the Water-Poet..., 1630. £1,000-1,500Dominic Winter, May 14: Pierpont Morgan Collection. Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, 1904 & 1906. £2,000-3,000 -
Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.
-
Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000 -
Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2007 Issue
In The News: Burned Books, George Washington Baseball Cards, and the Alibris Nickel
You may have missed it, as there was no accompanying fanfare, but the Alibris nickel quietly faded into oblivion sometime recently. You may recall that Alibris always cut a nickel off the price of books listed on their site. This is the old marketing strategy used to sell gasoline and other products. $2.99 9/10ths appears to consumers to be significantly less than $3.00 per gallon. The book posted for $5.00 elsewhere would be $4.95 on Alibris. The $10 book would be $9.95, the $25,000 book $24,999.95. If nothing else, it gave Alibris first listing on the websites that search multiple listing sites for books. However, it must not have made a noticeable difference in sales, or at least not enough to be worth the lost five cents of revenue on every copy. Alibris made no announcement, so we do not know why the "discount" was dropped, but one can guess that they would not have made the change if the lost nickel increased sales.
One of the stranger pieces of printed, collectible ephemera showed up on eBay recently. Sports cards can be quite valuable, as anyone who ever wished to purchase an early Honus Wagner can attest. However, this was a more unusual baseball card. After all, at least Wagner played the game. This was a George Washington baseball card, which anyone familiar with the chronology of baseball and George Washington will quickly realize is logically impossible. Washington died two decades before Abner Doubleday was born. It's possible, had they overlapped, Washington would have been a great pitcher or powerful hitter. He was certainly a great general and president. Nevertheless, greatness in other fields does not always translate to baseball, as Michael Jordan's baseball career established.
This card was produced by Allen and Ginter, a division of baseball card magnate Topps, Inc. They are the ones who printed the baseball cards you remember from your youth, the ones with baseball players on them. The Allen and Ginter division has printed a series of classic cards, ones meant to look like the old baseball cards of the late 19th century. However, they have added a few surprises, including notable people from other sports, and a few from professions outside of the world of games. Like presidents.
The Washington card, however, is unusual even by their standards. Just three were printed, and each has embedded in it a strand of Washington's hair. Reportedly, Topps purchased three strands of Washington's hair from a hair collector, and inserted them in the cards. No price was given, but Washington's hair sells for a premium (like real estate, they are no longer making any). When the first of these cards surfaced and was placed on eBay, it was quickly bid up into the thousands of dollars.
Among the reactions generated by this card were "weird" and "gross." The owner reported one person wanted to buy it so he could clone Washington. This is the best idea we have heard in a long time. Can you imagine a President George W. we can all agree upon? Better yet, can you imagine a president saying, "I cannot tell a lie" without telling one? A second George Washington would be a far greater contribution to humanity than another Dolly the Sheep. Still, it is dubious that hair in baseball cards is quite in keeping with the dignity of the man. Perhaps Topps should have printed a Millard Fillmore card, he being more accustomed to presidential ridicule than the esteemed Washington.