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Bonhams, June 16-25: 15th-CENTURY TREATISE ON SYPHILIS. GRÜNPECK. 1496. $20,000 - $30,000Bonhams, June 16-25: THE NORMAN COPY OF BENIVIENI'S TREATISE ON PATHOLOGY. 1507. $12,000 - $18,000Bonhams, June 16-25: FRACASTORO. Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus. 1530. $8,000 - $12,000Bonhams, June 16-25: THE FIRST PUBLISHED WORK ON SKIN DISEASES. MERCURIALIS. De morbis cutaneis... 1572. $10,000 - $15,000Bonhams, June 16-25: BIDLOO. Anatomia humani corporis... 1685. $6,000 - $9,000Bonhams, June 16-25: THE NORMAN COPY OF DOUGLASS'S EARLY AMERICAN WORK ON INNOCULATION AND SMALLPOX. 1722. $20,000 - $30,000Bonhams, June 16-25: LIND'S FIRST TREATISE ON SCURVY. 1753. $15,000 - $20,000Bonhams, June 16-25: RARE JENNER SIGNED CIRCULAR ON VACCINATION. 1821. $4,000 - $6,000Bonhams, June 16-25: MOST BEAUTIFUL OF MEDICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. BRIGHT. Reports of Medical Cases... 1827-1831. $10,000 - $15,000Bonhams, June 16-25: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PRESENTATION COPY TO HER MOTHER. 1860. $6,000 - $8,000Bonhams, June 16-25: LORENZO TRAVER'S MANUSCRIPT JOURNAL OF BURNSIDE'S NORTH CAROLINA EXPEDITION. TRAVER, Lorenzo. $2,000 - $3,000Bonhams, June 16-25: ONE OF THE EARLIEST PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOKS ON DERMATOLOGY. HARDY. Clinique Photographique... 1868. $3,000 - $5,000
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Bonhams, June 16-24: KELMSCOTT PRESS. RUSKIN. The Nature of Gothic. 1892. $1,500 - $2,500Bonhams, June 16-24: ASHENDENE PRESS. The Wisdom of Jesus. 1932. $2,000 - $3,000Bonhams, June 16-24: CHARLOTTE BRONTE WRITES AS GOVERNESS. Autograph Letter Signed, 1851. $15,000 - $25,000Bonhams, June 16-24: FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS. BRONTE, Emily. New York, 1848. $3,000 - $5,000Bonhams, June 16-24: IAN FLEMING ASSOCIATION COPY. You Only Live Twice. London, 1964. $7,000 - $9,000Bonhams, June 16-24: DELUXE EDITION WITH ORIGINAL PAINTING. BUKOWSKI, Charles. War All the Time. 1984. $3,000 - $5,000Bonhams, June 16-24: EINSTEIN'S MOST POWERFUL STATEMENT ON THE ATOMIC BOMB. Original Typed Manuscript Signed, "On My Participation in the Atom Bomb Project," 1953. $100,000 - $150,000Bonhams, June 16-24: EINSTEIN ON SCIENCE, WAR AND MORALITY. Autograph Letter Signed, 1949. $20,000 - $30,000Bonhams, June 16-24: SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI. WASHINGTON, George. Engraved document signed, 1786. $8,000 - $12,000Bonhams, June 16-24: AN EARLY CHINESE-MADE 34-STAR U.S. CONSULAR FLAG. $8,000 - $12,000Bonhams, June 16-24: SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH OF LINCOLN WITH HIS SON TAD. 1864. $60,000 - $90,000Bonhams, June 16-24: MALCOLM X WRITES FROM KENYA. Postcard signed, 1964. $4,000 - $6,000
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Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Winston Link Signed Photograph, Hotshot Eastbound, Iager, West Virginia, July 1957. $3,400 to $3,800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Alexander Hamilton ALS, Whiskey Rebellion. $2,800 to $3,200.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Civil War Canteen and Letters, Thomas Tabb Jr. CSA. $1,800 to $2,200.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Archive of Capt. William Tabb of MS, CSA, Killed Atlanta. $1,000 to $1,400.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Rudyard Kipling Collection, 29 Volumes, First Editions; Zaehnsdorf Bindings. $1,000 to $1,200.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Artist Andrew Wyeth & Family Signed Letters, Cards. $1,000 to $1,200.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Augusta Resolves Silk Broadside, Revolutionary War RelateD. $800 to $1,000.Case Antiques, July 12-13: 1894 Map of Nashville. $800 to $900.Case Antiques, July 12-13: CSA Navy Appointment, Semmes and Mallory plus Photo of Lt. Armstrong. $600 to $800.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Slave Colonies of Great Britain, 1825, Macaulay, First Edition, plus Debate on Abolition, 1792. $600 to $800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Signed Photo of 3 Presidents: Nixon, Ford, Carter. $600 to $800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Slave Ledger, Merrill Plantations, Natchez, MS & Concordia, LA. $1,000 to $1,200. -
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Rare Book Monthly
A Sale in the Fall to Test the Market
By Bruce McKinney
In a few weeks Bonhams will announce they are handling my second sale - The American Experience - 1626 - 1850, the second auction of books, manuscripts and ephemera from the collections I've built over the past twenty years. The December sale is to be held in New York. The auction follows, by one year, The De Orbe Novo sale - Exploration of the New World 1492-1625 that was organized by Bloomsbury and raised $3.5 million. For the second sale the cataloguing of more than 330 lots of Americana including Central and South American material, is underway. Sources, purchase dates and prices paid will be included in the descriptions as they were in the first sale. I believed then and know now that provenance and pricing history are an important, even essential part of the story of material.
Books in their own right can be enormously appealing. When their history is attached they become something more; connections linking collectors, dealers and institutions across decades and sometimes centuries. Often for the serious and sometimes for the emerging collector the history of individual copies become the thread that binds disparate volumes into collections that matter. I know that for me it has.
Building collections of specific copies that others have valued is difficult to achieve. Most books these days are bought and sold by harried people consulting online descriptions and generic bibliographies to complete listings and post quickly. In the rush, tell-tale evidence is often lost or ignored and books then slip silently from firmly identified to probable to possible to invisible. Such volumes often have passed through important collections but their ownership details disappeared into the successive retellings of a book's description.
Later reconstruction of provenance becomes a difficult job with an uncertain reward. For other reasons as well provenance is always disappearing. Sometimes sellers remove bookplates because they are embarrassed. Other times buyers wish to eliminate ownership history to obscure sources as well as what they paid. Other cataloguers simply ignore bookplates and signatures. Provenance is in fact always endangered, always subject to removal as a foreign object. So it is marvelous when this information survives. In this second sale the material will be thoroughly explained, its connection to the past documented to the extent we know it, its present value substantiated at auction, its future secure so long as future buyers do not tear away the bookplate that links each book to its past.
In building collections with the help of Bill Reese I have done so with someone who is entirely committed not just to these books but also to their history. This is not to suggest that all or even most of the material has a clear history. What is known, at minimum, is my source, date and price. Where material was purchased at auction I have these auction descriptions. Where Bill Reese has been able to identify copies I include that. When material was purchased at either the Siebert sales in 1999 or the Laird Park sale in 2000 we have the complete cataloguing. Taken together Mr. Reese represented me in the purchase of 78 items at these sales and sold to me or participated in another 135 +/- items that are included in this sale; altogether 2/3rds of this entire collection. The material will be broadly understandable, the upcoming auction important for its clarity.