Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2009 Issue

Auction Updates: By email every Sunday night

A Weekly Auction Update

A Weekly Auction Update


By Bruce McKinney

Every 18 hours, more or less, a documented traditional auction completes somewhere in the world. The sale may be in North America, Europe, Central America or Australia; in New York, Sydney, London, Paris, Los Angeles or in any of the other places documented book auctions are conducted. A few days later the sold and unsold lots are confirmed and realized prices added, the sale then archived in the Americana Exchange Database. AE covers all such auctions as a free service for auction bidders and auction houses.

In the economic downturn that began in 2008, auction realizations, that for many years hovered at 65% of typical dealer prices for comparable copies, have fallen to 50% and appear to be trying to find a bottom. We are now providing a Monday morning review of all documented sales archived during the previous week.

Click here to go to the Upcoming Auctions page.

Reports are emailed once a week, early Monday morning. During 2009 we expect to document close to 500 sales, an average of almost 40 a month.

We also release, around the 15th of the month, graphs updating auction activity through the end of the preceding month. Click here to see the current charts.

All reports are free. To receive these free email updates click here to sign up, or select the upcoming Auctions link on the AE toolbar and select -

Sign-up for Auction Results Updates

The only information required is your name and email address.

Once signed up we suggest you select Test My Email. Then check your email inbox to confirm the test report arrives. If it has not the report may be going into your spam file. If this is the case, to receive weekly mailings, find our incoming message in your spam folder and identify it to your spam blocker as "This is not spam." Future mailings will reach you each Monday.

Every email you receive carries a link to cancel the service. To re-activate it you will need to sign-up again. We neither sell nor share access to AE mailing lists.

All email addresses are kept confidential and used for no other purposes.

Sign-up Now.

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