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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.
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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 - January - 2009 Issue
AE Top 500 at Auction for 2008!
By Michael Stillman
Another year has come to an end, which means it is time to look back at the AE Top 500 of book and ephemera sales at auction for 2008. This was a tough year. It certainly started well enough, a robust economy providing high-end book collectors with sufficient funds to feed their obsession. As late as July, $4 gas, painful for drivers, reflected just how booming the economy was. The year did not end this way. Next month we will have a chance to gather all of the sales figures for 2008 to present a more detailed look at the market for books. For now, the anecdotal evidence hints at a dose of reality.
Nothing was close to last year's top prize of $21.3 million for a Magna Carta, but that was an aberration even last year. What's more telling is #500. In 2007, the 500th most expensive item at auction sold for $72,000. This past year, #500 went for just $51,000. The midpoint number in the first half of 2008 was $61,000. The midpoint for the second half of the year was only $43,750. For those of you in the book trade who have found making sales difficult, or requiring unusually steep discounts, it is not your fault. Books are subject to the same market forces as gasoline, stocks, and real estate. This is a better time for buyers than sellers.
Now it's time to get to the Top 500. Near the end of this article, you will find a link to the complete list. There are many names that make multiple appearances on this list, and often make it year after year. You will find plenty of material from Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen and Hugo. This was a very big year for material related to Andre Breton. Scientists get their due with Darwin, Einstein, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo all quite popular. From government, Elizabeth I, Churchill, Washington and Lincoln are always in demand. Albrecht Durer illustrations are regulars to the Top 500, as are those of Audubon. This year, many original illustrations for Peter Rabbit and Winnie-the-Pooh also brought in top dollar. Beethoven and Mozart may not have made the Billboard Top 500, but they made our charts. Several copies of the Book of Mormon prove it is extremely collectible if not rare. Economist Adam Smith had a better year than the economy.
At #486 was the copy of John Ledyard's Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage which made such a stir when it went from eBay to Christie's auction rooms in 81 days. $52,500. An archive of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took in $59,750, enough for #412. He was no Lincoln, but Abraham's ineffectual predecessor, James Buchanan, made it to 346 with a private letter claiming, "I console myself with the conviction that no act or omission of mine has produced the terrible calamity [Civil War]." $67,000. At 322 is a remarkable letter from French navigator La Perouse, written seven years before he disappeared off the coast of Australia, concerning a meeting he had with George Washington in 1781. He, like most others, was impressed. $71,874. Next, at #321, is an archive of over 200,000 photographs from films and of their stars from the massive inventory sale of the Collector's Book Store of Hollywood. $71,980.