Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2025 Issue

Introducing Categories: Maps, our first!

Introducing Categories: Maps, our first!

From the beginning of the printed word, records about them have been kept. Their form soon coalesced into a common understanding that title, author, date and place published identifies most printings.  Since then, not much has changed, until now.   Until now, search logic was used to penetrate catalogues and databases with three or more of these:                   By author name             By title             By subject             And by date   And these identifiers still work fine. However, we’re in the earliest moments when collectible paper will dominate the field.  Searchi...

High Prices Highlight the 2024 Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction for Books and Related Collectibles

High Prices Highlight the 2024 Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction for Books and Related Collectibles

Another year has come to a close, which means it's time to look back at the year just past with the annual Rare Book Hub Top 500 highest prices paid at auction for books and related collectibles. I...

Trending Now - Books

Trending Now - Books

The reports of books' death have been greatly exaggerated. This is no doubt a difficult time for many booksellers, particularly smaller ones and those in the business of selling high-priced classic...

And the Word of the Year Is...

And the Word of the Year Is...

The Oxford University Press has named its Word of the Year. For not the first time, The Word of the Year is not a word, its a short phrase, a combination of two words. Those words are “brain rot.” ...

Rare Book Hub: New Services and New Rates

Our Rates for 2025-26   Rare Book Hub’s subscription prices go up on January 1st every two years. This is it.   Here is what we are providing:   Access to our Rare Book Transaction History ...

PI(E) Day Baking & Culinary Historian Contest March 14, 2025

PI(E) Day Baking & Culinary Historian Contest March 14, 2025

The team planning for Pi(e) Day 2025, invites book people everywhere to combine books and baking by joining Petite Pi(e) Day on March 14, 2025.  For the seventh year running The Great Library Pie ...

Magra, Good for Nothing...Or the Apocryphal Relation of Cook’s First Voyage

Magra, Good for Nothing...Or the Apocryphal Relation of Cook’s First Voyage

According to Captain Cook, midshipman James Magra was “good for nothing”, but Magra did at least one good thing: he published an apocryphal relation of Cook’s first voyage. Translated into French i...

January 1 is Public Domain Day

January 1 is Public Domain Day

January 1 is an important holiday. No, I'm not talking about New Year's Day. There is another holiday that happens on the same day – Public Domain Day. This the day on which works whose copyrights ...

Newly Discovered Manuscript Declaration of Independence to Be Auctioned

Newly Discovered Manuscript Declaration of Independence to Be Auctioned

For the first time ever, a manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence written in the hand of a key participant in the nation’s founding is set to appear at auction. This extraordinary docum...

Booksellers Take on Amazon with a Little Help from their Friends

Booksellers Take on Amazon with a Little Help from their Friends

There's a battle going on in France between booksellers and Amazon. An independent party, the government, may again be called on to render a verdict, though they are not nonpartisan. You know who t...

Case Auctions: A Potpourri January 25-26

Case Auctions: A Potpourri January 25-26

Case Auctions of Knoxville, Tennessee has prepared a fascinating auction catalogue in conjunction with their 2025 Winter Art Antiques Sale that occurs January 25-26. For those who have a yen to br...

Multiple Travel, Research, and Residence Grants offered by Libraries

Multiple Travel, Research, and Residence Grants offered by Libraries

Artist-in-Residence and Research Fellowship at University of Miami’s Kislak Collection (Deadline Jan. 24, 2025) The University of Miami's Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploratio...

HighBids.com: Two Chances to add to your Collections

Hi-BidsWin.com is offering Print History Tools of the Trade   As January arrives, so too two auctions at HighBidsWin.com will soon be gaveled down.   They are:   Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazi...

Shapero Rare Books' to End Listing on London Stock Exchange

Shapero Rare Books' to End Listing on London Stock Exchange

Scholium Group, the parent of Shapero Rare Books (and little other business besides Shapero Modern Prints), will be delisting its stock from the London Stock Exchange on January 6. Ten years ago, S...

The Rare Book Hub Monthly: 2024 in Review

The Rare Book Hub Monthly: 2024 in Review

Whew, what a year! While you were sweating inflation, the cost of living and the tight election we were posting monthly articles from the world of rare books including auctions, dealers, social med...

Six New Catalogues Reviewed for January

Six New Catalogues Reviewed for January

This month we review six new catalogues from six booksellers. Rulon-Miller Books features titles from various collector and bookseller collections they recently obtained. Kelmscott Bookshop focuses...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
    Year in Review
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: A Rare Hebrew Bible with Micrographic Masorah. Sold: 1,514,000 USD
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: "The Freedman's Primer.” Sold: 241,300 USD
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: Smith, William. "The Map that Changed the World." Sold: 139,700 USD
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: Psalter, C13th. Illuminated Psalter. Sold: 330,200 GBP
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: Lincoln, Abraham. The abolition of slavery. Sold: 13,697,500 USD
    Sotheby’s Year in Review: Vergilius. Opera, Venice, Aldo Manuzio, 1501. Sold: 1,041,400 USD
  • University Archives
    Rare Autographs & Books Including Lincoln & Space Exploration
    January 7, 2026
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Jefferson's Owned & Signed "Plutarch's Morals" Vol. 4. - 1st Time At Auction In Nearly 200 Years!
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Flown NASA Hasselblad 203S Space Camera On Endeavour STS-111, With Components, Data Module & Flown Film Magazine!
    University Archives, Jan. 7: One Of The Finest Lincoln Assassination Letters Extant, April 15, 1865 - Illustrated & Beyond Dramatic! 8pp.
    University Archives
    Rare Autographs & Books Including Lincoln & Space Exploration
    January 7, 2026
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Isaac Newton Highly Important Religious Manuscript With 85+ Words In His Hand, Ex-Bonhams
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Marilyn Monroe Gorgeous Signed & Inscribed Photograph, PSA Authenticated
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Rare Ernest Hemingway, 1 Of 10 Signed Presentation Copies Of "Farewell To Arms"
    University Archives
    Rare Autographs & Books Including Lincoln & Space Exploration
    January 7, 2026
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Ayn Rand 11pp Revised AMS "The Cold Civil War" For LA Times Newspaper- 900+ Words In Her Hand!
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Mary Todd Lincoln Calls Abe A "great & good man, who loved & served his country so well"
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Abraham Lincoln Gives Rebel Woman Pass To Visit Prisoner Of War Husband, Showing A Very Human Lincoln!
    University Archives
    Rare Autographs & Books Including Lincoln & Space Exploration
    January 7, 2026
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Babe Ruth PSA Type II Signed Conlon Photo, With Ruth Miniature Louisville Slugger, 16.25"
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin Signed Photo - Prime Crew Apollo 11 - PSA Authenticated
    University Archives, Jan. 7: Huge Abraham Lincoln Hesler Photo, Ca. 1880 - As If He Were In The Room!

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