Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2011 Issue

A Personal View of 2010

Detail from 1821's Missionary Herald.

Detail from 1821's Missionary Herald.

The Best Conversations:

The two most memorable conversations of 2010 were with people who held views that were very different than my own:

 

Early on I spoke with Bruce McKinney the publisher of AE Monthly and the AE auction data base. He is a celebrated book collector of the first order, and has recently held two very large and successful auctions of items from his own holdings.

 

What was so intriguing about our talk was the realization that the world of books looks very different through the eyes of a collector who is usually a buyer than it does through the eyes of a dealer who is usually a seller. He itemized the reasons why auction data is a more reliable index of value than dealer sales.

 

That was news to me, because of course; I see it exactly the other way. In my view bookselling is a noble occupation with a long and distinguished history and the dealer a better judge of value than the auctioneer. To me booksellers are a group of passionate people with specialized knowledge. It’s the knowledge you pay for – and it doesn’t always come cheap. But his comments did bring home to me that the buyer’s desires, fears and inclinations, are quite different than what we on the sellers’ side perceive.

 

Another discussion that stands out in my mind was with Paul Drake, who heads the antiquarian department of Better World Books. BWB is a multi-million dollar on-line corporate book selling operation. We spoke at their Indiana warehouse where about 100,000 mostly donated books a day were coming unloaded out of containers. This was used bookselling on a scale I previously had only dimly imagined.

 

He knew very little about books, but he knew a great deal about computers, pricing models, algorithm and Amazon rankings. He was very different than any of the other book people I have encountered over the years. I had a strong hunch his view of bookselling has more in common with the shape of the future than mine.

 

I was also much taken with the way he got into the trade. Here was a person who found himself in the book business much in the same way Jack found himself entwined with the beanstalk. He hadn’t looked for it, it just grew up under him one night and it was growing mighty fast. It was all that he could do to keep up.

 

That was not the way it happened to me.

 

I've been a solo dealer for more than 30 years, following in the footsteps of my parents who ran their antiquarian shop for more than 50 years. I started in this trade when the state of the art technology was a mimeograph machine and I’ve been working at it in some form ever since. I’m one of literally thousands of small dealers, all trying to make a living as booksellers, at the same time the trade is changing at an unprecedented rate.

 

By the end of 2010 with the increasing popularity of Kindles and Nooks, ipads, and free  online access to most of what’s been printed in the last 500 years, I found myself wondering if there will actually be a book trade as we know it now in the next ten years?

 

In 2010 the glut of ordinary post-ISBN books continued. They were cheap, common, losing value rapidly. At the other extreme were the rare, scarce, important, valuable and/or unusual items – many of them pre-ISBN, which now command prices that seem as outrageously high as the other end seems low. For the top end the buyers were insanely picky about condition to the point of absurdity. Mirroring our present economy, the middle seemed as if it had fallen out.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
  • Freeman’s | Hindman
    Western Manuscripts and Miniatures
    July 8, 2025
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.

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