-
Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000Ketterer Rare Books
Auction May 26thKetterer Rare Books, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000Ketterer Rare Books, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000 -
Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
-
Sotheby's
Sell Your Fine Books & ManuscriptsSotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USDSotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USDSotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USDSotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USDSotheby's
Sell Your Fine Books & ManuscriptsSotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USDSotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBPSotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBPSotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR -
Gonnelli
Auction 59
Antique prints, paintings and maps
May 20th 2025Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€Gonnelli
Auction 59
Antique prints, paintings and maps
May 20th 2025Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€Gonnelli
Auction 59
Antique prints, paintings and maps
May 20th 2025Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€Gonnelli
Auction 59
Antique prints, paintings and maps
May 20th 2025Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2005 Issue
Publishing Promotions From Alexander Rare Books
By Michael Stillman
Alexander Rare Books of Barre, Vermont, has published a catalogue of unusual and most interesting items. The focus here is rare, though not antiquarian. These are publishers' promotional items, most often early copies meant for booksellers, often just a first chapter, or beginnings of several different books. A few are even more promotional, such as displays. This is ephemeral material, but all tied to specific books and authors.
The majority of the items come from what Alexander calls "the golden age of marketing." This was the period from 1985-2000. Starting in the 1970s, there was an upsurge in booksellers. Smaller chains such as Walden and Dalton sprung up, while independents flourished. Publishers, pressed to sell more and more books, increased their marketing efforts. Material was distributed to encourage these stores to stock their books. However, since 2000, the number of independent bookstores has dropped precipitously. A few big chains, like Barnes and Noble and Borders, replaced the Mom and Pop stores. Then, much of the business shifted to the internet, through Amazon or listings on cooperative sites. The days when publishers needed to distribute their material to large numbers of independents was replaced by sales pitches to a few major buyers. There is no longer the quantity of this material being printed that there was during the "golden age."
How will collectors view this type of material over the long run? That's a question which is hard to answer. It is still too early to know how history will value a unique category of items that are still mostly under two decades old. We do not yet even know what value most of the underlying books will command as they age. Many come from relatively new authors. Some will be household names for generations yet to come; other will soon be forgotten. What we can say is that these will be uncommon items relating to works of recent authors, some of whom will become very collectible in the years ahead. These items will most likely be of great interest to those who collect these authors. Your job is to pick the right ones, because today, the great majority of these unusual items are priced very low. This is a field where anyone can collect, regardless of budget. We are on the ground floor, and while no one yet knows how many stories are in this building, we do know that the only way is up.
Here are some examples. Three authors are represented in this 1992 advance excerpt from their novels. There is The Tax Man by Peter Carey, Ever After, by Graham Swift, and Dreaming in Cuban from Cristina Garcia. For Garcia, it was her first novel. This promotional piece was put together by publisher Alfred A. Knopf. It is still in its original shrinkwrap. Item 37. Priced at $20.