A week ago we updated the auction trend charts. They tell an interesting story:
Auction Trends Charts
December is almost always a positive month for book auctions. The best material often comes out in the fourth quarter and it’s bound to achieve high prices even if the outcomes are less than some consignors hope. The median price increased $20 from the October low of $342 but was still well below the $378 median a year earlier. As the 12 Month Moving Average of Median Auction Prices chart shows auction realizations are still caught in the downward trend that dates from February 2008.
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AE's MatchMaker service, a really neat tool for locating newly listed books for sale, is now available to everyone, including those who are not paid members of this website. A free membership will ...
With this article I am just finishing my first year of writing about the antiquarian trade for AE Monthly. It’s been a wonderful opportunity and I’ve enjoyed it immensely, especially working with o...
A man now in winter looking forward to his seventy-eighth spring, many times retired and never retiring, David Yount now of Mashpee in Massachusetts is engaged in the career of bookselling and find...
A forgery on a Lincoln document came to light last month twelve years after the document's "discovery" in 1998. The forgery does not alter history in any major way, nor will it change our view of a...
A few months ago, I got a query from an East Coast library wanting a particularly expensive art book that I had in my inventory. I replied that I had it, they bought it without quibbling at the pr...
Shakespearean book thief Raymond Scott is preparing an appeal of both his conviction and lengthy sentence. Scott is the very entertaining character who showed up at the Folger Library a few years b...
The 44th Annual California Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco over the weekend of Friday the 11th through Sunday the 13th. Two hundred and twenty-nin...
The next generation of collectors emerges using new tools to find material. The challenge is to encourage acquirers to buy at auction. They buy on eBay because it's perceived cheap, online becaus...
What began with high hopes in 2007 has ended in disappointment. Bloomsbury has curtailed its New York operations. It issued the following statement:
January 5 2011
We are currently in the proc...
It was a story about some minor vandalism at a library that came out two months ago. It was a local inside-page story for a day, of no consequence to the world beyond the city limits, and not much ...
This month we review 12 new catalogues in the second section of AE Monthly. The William Reese Company offers a collection of Americana which appeared in Printing and the Mind of Man. Helen R. Kahn ...
ALDE, Apr. 8: GUEVARA (ANTONIO DE). Histoire de Marc-Aurèle, Empereur Romain, vray miroir et horloge des Princes. Paris, Pierre et Galliot du Pré, frères, 1565. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: HEURES DE LA VIERGE. Horæ in laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ ad usum Romanum. Paris, Charles L'Angelier, 1556. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: MONTAIGNE (MICHEL DE). Les Essais. Édition nouvelle, trouvée après le deceds de l'autheur… Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1595. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [ROJAS (FERNANDO DE)]. Celestina, tragicomedia di Calisto et Melibea, tradotta de lingua castigliana in italiano idioma… Venise, 1531. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CAMÕES (LUÍS DE). Os Lusiadas. Lisbonne, Pedro Crasbeeck, 1613. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Bruxelles, Roger Velpius & Huberto Antonio, 1611. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: LA FONTAINE (JEAN DE). Fables choisies, mises en vers. Paris, Denys Thierry et Claude Barbin, 1678-1694. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, Joaquin Ibarra, 1780. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: DIDEROT (DENIS) ET JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Paris, 1751-1765. €15,000 to €20,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Les Laboureurs. Poème tiré de Jocelyn… Lyon, J. A. Henry, 1883. €8,000 to €10,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. Livre de prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Lyon, [A. Roux], 1886. €5,000 to €6,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts & Objects from Three Important Collections Open for Bidding 2-17 April
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun]. Le Roman de la Rose, [Geneva or Lyons, c.1481], first printed edition of the most important medieval French vernacular poem. £200,000 to £300,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Castiglione. Il libro del cortegiano. [Venice], April 1528, first edition, in a magnificent binding by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier. £100,000 to £150,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Jacobus de Cessolis. Schachzabelbuch, Strasbourg, 1483, von der Lasa copy. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: World Championship, 1972. A collection of 84 press photographs of the famed match between Spassky and Fischer. £2,000 to £3,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Ben Franklin. Autograph letter signed, to Lord Shelburne, British Prime Minister, during peace negotiations, November 1782. £15,000 to £20,000.
