Sotheby's has been selling property for others going on three centuries now. Two weeks ago, the tables were turned. This time, it was Sotheby's itself that was sold. The hammer price was $3.7 billion, undoubtedly the highest realization ever at Sotheby's, although the sale did not take place in the auction rooms. It was a private sale.
The buyer officially was BidFair USA, but that is an entity wholly owned by entrepreneur Patrick Drahi and his family. Mr. Drahi is a French and Israeli citizen who has had enormous success in the telecommunications and digital media sphere. He owns sever...
Sotheby’s, a publicly traded company for 30 years, has been purchased by Patrick Drahi for $3.7 billion including debt. In going private the firm joins the other major auction houses in the world,...
It was a stunning claim, at least for one coming from a respected university, the University of Bristol. The Voynich Manuscript, whose indecipherable code has eluded translation by the greatest sch...
SELF HELP is one of the book trade’s most popular genres. Most of us have encountered Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, or Napoleon Hill’s Think and ...
History matters, if not so much these days. Knowing less about history does not much concern those who know less but those who know more are concerned because they believe past experience is deter...
As certain as is summer, so too is the annual arrival of the Friends of C. H. Booth Book Fair, one of the most eagerly awaited book fairs in New England. This year’s 5 day event follows the sequen...
The long journey of Barnes Noble, once the world's largest bookseller, took another major turn in its declining years when it was sold last month to Elliott Management for $683 million, or $6.50 p...
For the first time ever, a complete collection of Theodore de Bry’s Voyages—‘Great’ and ‘Small’—is available online! These 29 volumes published between 1590 and 1634 are, with their extraordinary i...
In 1864 Abraham Lincoln, weighted with war, made a trip to Philadelphia to support a charity event whose goal was to raise money for wounded soldiers. For the event he provided 48 copies of the Em...
About half of Forum Auctions’ online sale on Thursday 3rdJuly comprises books from the collection of the the late Frank Herrmann (1927-2017), author, publisher, collector and mentor to many at Foru...
It seems beyond shocking the deterioration in the American political landscape but as a consequence there seems to be room for another 72 year old in the race. These are the policies I will pursue...
Comic book crime is no laughing matter. As the value of collectible comics has soared in recent years, so have the number of thefts and break-ins related to them. Superheroes may be able to take ca...
Recently I bought a copy of “An Account of the Murder of Richard Jennings; Together with the Confessions of Teed Dunning.” It details the story of a murder and later the execution of two men in O...
Oops. The digitization and online posting of documents is a wonderful benefit of technological advances, making all sorts of information once virtually unobtainable available to scholars and the pu...
This month we review 10 new booksellers' catalogues. Shapero Rare Books offers "the world on stone," that is, lithography. The 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop presents a collection of "p...
