Rare Book Monthly

Articles - October - 2008 Issue

Hunkering Down

Crowd gathering on Wall Street, 1929.

Crowd gathering on Wall Street, 1929.


by Renée Magriel Roberts

With all of the craziness going on this week, I was thinking about doing a review of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929, but instead I decided to share what we've been doing and thinking about doing to insure that we don't go down the tubes along with everyone else headed in that direction.

Keeping It Simple and Small

First of all, we decided to keep our business simple and to keep it small. By simple, I mean that basically two people can do everything. We resist exponential growth - growth that may force us to rent additonal warehouse space, or hire additional people. Instead we have automated everything that can reasonably be automated, we review our stock on a regular basis so that we are not carrying junk that is taking up space, and when and if we do need people, we work with them as consultants or as skilled professionals who have businesses of their own.

Good Stuff Sells

Good stuff sells and continues to sell. Really rare material that is of interest has held up very well, even in what might be viewed as a "soft" market. Instead of buying huge lots of books and looking for those needles in the proverbial haystack, we buy only selectively and with purpose. We buy to increase our holdings in certain targeted areas, or we buy because we know we have a customer ready at the other end. By narrowing our focus to say, Americana, or British politics in the early nineteenth century, we can buy with knowledge. We have virtually given up going to library book sales, or buying huge lots of books randomly.

Keeping an Eye on Profitability

You have to either increase your sales or decrease your costs to become more profitable, or to hold your own in a soft market. We've done a lot of research on shipping domestically and internationally in order to trim the costs (and provide better service) in this area. We currently use FedEx international, Pitney Bowes, UPS and the USPS, as well as variants of the above. We use less expensive recycled materials for packing when possible (something, by the way, appreciated by our environmentally-conscious customers).

On the sales side we've worked for several years now to expand our sales safely to foreign marketplaces so that when the dollar is weak we get stronger foreign sales.

Reducing the Cost of Overhead

We used to have two bricks-and-mortar computer stores and they cost a fortune. We are now set up with an interwined bookstore/home, keeping the rarest items off-site securely. This allows us to partially expense many items as the cost of doing business, while avoiding the overhead of rent and maintenance of a separate space.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
    Ketterer, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
  • Doyle
    The Collection of Mary Tyler Moore
    June 4, 2025
    DOYLE: Peter Max, Portrait of Mary Tyler Moore (Versions 1,2, 5, 6), 2001. Estimate $10,000-15,000
    DOYLE: The iconic screen-used wall-mounted "M" from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Estimate $5,000-8,000
    DOYLE: The Mary Tyler Moore Show by Al Hirschfeld. Estimate $4,000-6,000
    Doyle
    The Collection of Mary Tyler Moore
    June 4, 2025
    DOYLE: Annie Leibovitz presents Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke for Vanity Fair. Estimate $4,000-6,000
    DOYLE: Al Hirschfeld presents Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke in the CBS Wednesday Night Lineup. Estimate $4,000-6,000
    DOYLE: Richard McKenzie, Portrait of Mary Tyler Moore. Estimate $1,000-2,000
    Doyle
    The Collection of Mary Tyler Moore
    June 4, 2025
    DOYLE: Three Original Bill Hargate Costume Designs for The Mary Tyler Moore Hour. Estimate $600-800
    DOYLE: The famous Bonnie and Clyde "Wanted" broadside. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE: Ticket to the Final Episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show Estimate $400-600
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR

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