Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2008 Issue

Announcing The AE Top 500 Prices at Auction for 2007

Announcing The AE Top 500 Prices at Auction for 2007

By Michael Stillman With the close of another year, it is time to look back at the highest priced books and related ephemera at auction last year. We have scoured the results at all of the major auction houses and a great many smaller ones to come up with the AE 500 top prices at auction for 2007. Five items made it into the million-dollar category in 2007, down from seven the previous year. However, at the top, number one exceeded last year's top price of just over $5 million by fourfold. Particularly interesting was the price at the bottom of the list -- number 500. That figure wa...

Newspapers: Sublimate to Survive

Newspapers: Sublimate to Survive

By Bruce McKinney I have for several months been thinking about the future of newspapers. My family owned weeklies in upstate New York for fifty years and regularly, at the dinner table while I ...

<i>In The News</i>:  Magna Carta Sells For $21.3 Million

<i>In The News</i>: Magna Carta Sells For $21.3 Million

By Michael Stillman It was the sale of this century, a one-item auction at Sotheby's in New York. At sale was one of the earlier versions of the Magna Carta, written by hand in 1297. The Magna ...

The Great Homosassa Hassle: or A Trip Through the Wonder World of USPS Insurance Claims Adjustment

The Great Homosassa Hassle: or A Trip Through the Wonder World of USPS Insurance Claims Adjustment

By Frank Bequaert My wife Lucia and I run an antiquarian book business in Fitzwilliam New Hampshire. Our shop is a quarter mile from the Post Office which makes it convenient for mailing pack...

An Update on Joel Munsell, 19th Century Albany Printer

An Update on Joel Munsell, 19th Century Albany Printer

By Bruce McKinney For more than three years, I have been searching the internet for "re-appearances" of books, manuscripts and ephemera printed [and or written] by Joel Munsell, the 19th century ...

AbeBooks Lists Its Top Sellers, Most Expensive Books for 2007

AbeBooks Lists Its Top Sellers, Most Expensive Books for 2007

By Michael Stillman AbeBooks has issued its lists of the bestselling books, most expensive books, and various other "top 10 and 25" lists, such as top authors, signed books, and used books. As...

Sex, Knitting and Helicopters:  The BookFinder Top 10 for 2007

Sex, Knitting and Helicopters: The BookFinder Top 10 for 2007

By Michael Stillman BookFinder.com has released its list of the top 10 most sought-after old books of 2007. Making the BookFinder list requires a combination of being both highly desired and ha...

Second Life: It's Not a Game

Second Life: It's Not a Game

By Renée Magriel Roberts It's 11 PM and I've finally finished stacking orders for tomorrow, dispensed with all today's correspondence, special-ordered books, finished and uploaded today's data ...

A Celebration of Washington, Lincoln and the Presidents

A Celebration of Washington, Lincoln and the Presidents

By Bruce McKinney The February issue of AE Monthly will include the second issue of The Bookseller's Comet. It will include printed material and objects offered by members pertaining to "A C...

Rowling Book Sells For $4 Million

Rowling Book Sells For $4 Million

By Michael Stillman We have come to expect that some books will sell at auction for well beyond their estimates. Sometimes an auction house may not appreciate the book's importance, at other ti...

The Presidential Primaries

The Presidential Primaries

By Bruce McKinney A hundred and fifty years ago candidates stayed home. Today the voters do and who can blame them. The debates in 2007 confirm that the run for President is nothing more tha...

Rare Book Review Awards for 2007 Announced

Rare Book Review Awards for 2007 Announced

By Michael Stillman Rare Book Review, the magazine of the rare and antiquarian book trade, recently announced the winners of their inaugural Rare Book Review Awards. Winners were selected by a...

Nineteen Book Catalogues Reviewed in Section Two

Nineteen Book Catalogues Reviewed in Section Two

We begin the new year with 19 book catalogue reviews in Section Two. Dragon Books has issued their first catalogue. The Antiquariaat Forum offers books from Europe and the Far East, Libreria de Ant...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Geek Week
    2-17 July | New York
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Album Containing Four Signed Photographs of Albert Einstein, With Eleven Additional Einstein Photographs, From His Journey to Japan Aboard the S.S. Kitano Maru, 1922. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Fred Freeman. Illustration of the Channel Tunnel’s British Portal (Presumably at Folkestone), ca. 1958. $5,000 to $7,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Wolfgang Kurt Hermann Panofsky Group of Awards. Pief Panofsky's 1961 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, National Medal of Science, Enrico Fermi Award, and Others. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Seymour Cray; Cray-3. Manuscript Cray-3 Logbook, 1989-90. — The Only Significant Cray Manuscript to Come to Auction. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Albert Einstein. Typed Letter Signed ("A. Einstein."), to Ann Morrisett, Affirming a Pacifist's Right to Self-Defense, March 21, 1952. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Operating and Maintenance Manual for the BINAC Binary Automatic Computer Built for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. Philadelphia, 1949. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Steve Jobs Apple Computer Business Card, c. 1977. $5,000 to $8,000.
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