Sold! Auctions Review

Disregarding the fairly expensive and unique materials in The Zamorano 80, it appears that the prices for those materials in the low and middle ranges are suffering stagflation. At the Clifford sale, if one had bought every primary lot that sold for under $500, one would have acquired 32 lots for about $10,600. On the other hand, the same bidding strategy at the Volkmann sale would have yielded only 22 lots for about $7,100. If one had been willing to open the purse a little wider, however, and purchase every primary lot that sold for less than $1000, the results would have been remarkably similar. In the Clifford sale that strategy would have acquired 43 lots for about $19,300; in the Volkmann sale, 40 lots for about $19,900. Although it appears that the lower and medium priced books are indeed creeping up in auction value, on the whole they seem to be running in place to a certain extent.

Sloan’s map and manuscript auction (sale #13, A Few Good Maps & Manuscripts Touching upon the History of Texas, California, the Southwest, Mexico & The Borderlands) contained nineteen lots, of which fifteen were maps. The remaining four consisted of two Western guidebooks and two manuscripts. The first eight maps were so-called Treaty Maps. These maps are all related to the significant controversy that surrounded the determination of the U.S.-Mexican border after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, negotiated by American Nicholas P. Trist. Although all parties seemed to agree that the map was inaccurate, they nevertheless used the 1847 version of publisher John Disturnell’sMap of the United States of Mexico, first published by him in 1846. Because that map disastrously mislocated El Paso, the boundary controversy wasn’t settled until the Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

Disturnell’s own map was ultimately based on an inaccurate map of the same name first published by Henry Schenck Tanner in 1825. Versions of Tanner’s map constituted six of the map lots and met with a mixed reception, despite their superb condition and the relative rarity of the examples offered. Lot #3, estimated at $15,000-20,000, was Tanner’s 1837 “second edition” and sold for $15,000. It is important for its depictions of Texas, which is still shown as part of Mexico and has its boundary at the Nueces River. Lot #4, estimated at $20,000-40,000, was the first printing of the so called Disturnell Treaty Map. Published in New York, it is in Spanish and has had removed any mention of Texas as part of Coahuila. A beautiful copy of this map, it sold for $20,000. The last gasp of Tanner’s map in the controversy (lot #8) was the 1850 “fifth edition,” here present in the Streeter copy, which is the only one to have come on the market since his sale in 1969. This map showed the California Gold Fields, Fremont’s expeditions, and the U.S-Mexican border in what would be a very close to its final configuration. It sold for $20,000 on an estimate of $20,000-30,000.

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