Rare Book Monthly

Articles - June - 2014 Issue

The Facts on the Ground

After over 250 years in business, Sotheran's has learned to adapt to change (from their website).

After over 250 years in business, Sotheran's has learned to adapt to change (from their website).

This is  the second of three articles on changes in the field.  Dealers adapt.  They are canny and need to be.

 

The book business is not going away but neither is it going to remain the same.  Virtually all things that can change do.  Elsewhere in this issue of AEM there’s a piece on a San Francisco Public Library’s Friends of the Library program that is converting discarded material into the two fuels that power libraries, a sense of purpose and money to support San Francisco’s Public library system.  Their project is the remarkable conversion of what, just a decade or so ago, looked like a local failing used book field – now experiencing a fresh incarnation.  Such stories will probably never be common but neither will they be rare.  Changing circumstances encourage innovation.

 

For rare book dealers the challenges are different but equally compelling because, as in all things, their only constant is change and they are living in a seismic era.  For San Francisco Public the catalyst has been price.  What once cost something often now costs next to nothing.  For dealers their seismic changes are availability and transparency, their determining factors rarity and relevance in an electronic world too often reduced to electronic contact.  Those dealers who long preferred to make their cases in person no longer have so many opportunities.  By some estimates 70 to 90% of all bookshops have closed over the past 30 years.  Human contact, it turns out, is possibly the Internet’s greatest casualty.  Today’s new normal places the written description-story-telling capability second only to the Svengali-esk capacity to find great material.  We know from the SFPL experience that there are lots of books out there.  They are handling 1 million volumes every 74 weeks.  Successful dealers handle perhaps a thousand a year, selling to collectors and institutions that rely on them for expert advice.  There is the great mass of material and then there are the gems.

 

Many booksellers years ago sensed that the internet would in time shift the setting of prices from the hands of the sellers to the “show of hands” of buyers.  Rarity is a much over-used term and the stacking up of unsold copies over the past ten years conclusively shown that this word and its meaning has been so misused as to be almost irrelevant.  Rarity now requires a third party reference.

 

However dealers do it, to succeed they have had to shift their focus to the highly uncommon where the defining issues are relevance and importance.  This trend has helped dealers with the intellectual chops to explain their material while forcing the sellers of the more common material into the “let’s make a deal" environment that listing sites have drifted into.

 

In this changing environment the periodic re-authentication of price in the auction rooms has loomed large in importance because prices on the listing sites have proven surprisingly inflexible.  The theory has been [1] "if I cut my price others will cut theirs and I will then gain nothing,” and [2] “the market always recovers so I will get my price.  I just don’t know when.”

 

These attitudes, now widely known, are encouraging buyers to look more closely at auctions because they reflect changing valuation, sometimes lower prices, and in any event “market certification.”  If an item purchased at auction is later sold its earlier auction authentication becomes very important for it provides a pricing history that fresh buyers often take into account.

 

For dealers fresh and special have long been important attributes of what they invest their money and time in.  Those who have made this transition can expect to continue to do well.  Those who have become bogged down with rank and file copies of the too frequently copious examples may find themselves having to send an increasing percentage of their stock to 438 Treat Street or other similar triage centers.

 

The old rules simply don’t work anymore.

 

The final article in this series considers the role of auctions today. Click here to continue.


Posted On: 2014-06-02 10:05
User Name: tenpound

Bruce:
An article about "dealers" that encourages "buyers to look more closely at auctions" reveals AE's anti-dealer, pro-auction bias. Despite your excellent work compiling the AE database - one of the most useful tools to arrive on the scene in recent years - you are clearly not a friend to the trade.
Greg Gibson
Ten Pound Island Book Co.


Posted On: 2014-06-03 19:21
User Name: Fattrad1

Bruce,

I have to challenge your growth rate projections for auctions, I believe you are interpolating. That is using past statistics and drawing lines into the future, Wall St. is often guilty of this.

Having just completed one year of business with an open used bookstore, I am projecting a stabilization of prices for scarce works, the type of inventory that most dealers thrive on. We have been rather disappointed with the two auction houses we have bought/sold from, poor description of condition for purchases and a complete failure with a sale attempt on a RARE book.


Posted On: 2014-06-07 21:45
User Name: AE244154

Dear Greg,

I am committed to dealers. They are the lifeblood of the market but they too are living through the transformation that is changing collectors and libraries’ approaches to their collections. The increasingly unified market simply re-values and re-prioritizes material in ways no one could have predicted ten years ago.

Dealers have had opportunities to adjust and many have adjusted because the world in which they built their businesses is no longer the world we live in. And other formulas, that once worked better, now work less well.

I believe we know the issue is not whether there are enough collectors. Auctions are selling more lots each year while maintaining a consistent sell-through percentage.

In an article in the July issue of AE Monthly I’ll examine both the current state of the dealer trade and options for the future.

There’s a future. It just isn’t the one most expected.

Bruce
Bruce McKinney
AE


Rare Book Monthly

  • 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.
  • 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.
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