For the week ending 11/14/09 13 sales were archived: 6 in $, 6 in £, 1 in €. Total sales, expressed in dollars, were $8,909,768. Three-thousand-six-hundred-forty-five lots were offered and 2,662 sold for a 73% sell-through. For the 6 sales priced in dollars 71% sold. For all others 75% changed hands. For the second week running auction rooms around the world performed at levels consistent with the 1994-1998 period, that is, selling 72% to 75% of all lots offered. Consignors and buyers can both be encouraged.

The average lot price was $3,347, the dollar denominated lots $3,834, all others $2,990. The market for better material is firming.

Bonhams, at its New York sale of photographs on November 10th saw an image by Edward Weston titled "Nude (Charis, Santa Monica), 1936" realize $109,000. On the same day, in London, Bonhams sold a complete run of Cricketers' Almanack for the years 1864 to 1964, for £90,000 [$150,093]. Sotheby's the same day in London, sold the 1590 "Oriental Album of Bartell Schachman, for £361,250 [$578,643]. Swann in New York, also on the 10th, sold a 1956 signed limited edition of the Bible [by Marc Chagall], for $108,000 against an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. On the 9th, Swann offered the James B. Parks Collection of Fine Prints. Included was a complete set of 80 color reproductions of the works of Marcel Duchamp that was estimated at $40,000 to $60,000 and brought $150,000.

PBA, on the 5th, sold a copy of Patrick Gass' "A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery", dated 1808, for $7,800. Gass was the first participant to write a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Swann, on the 5th, offered "Old Master Through Modern Prints" and sold Faunes et Chevre by Picasso [1959] for $60,000.

In the Artcurial Briest-Le Fur-Poulain-F.Tajan sale of Livres Modernes "L'Assassinat considere comme un des beaux-arts [1930] by "QUINCEY (Thomas de). Maurice Beerblock" brought € 14,912 [$22,223].

Bruce McKinney
AE

11.15.09