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Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 124: Henri Courvoisier-Voisin, et alia, [Recueil de Vues de Paris et ses Environs], depicting precursors of the modern roller coaster, Paris, [1814-1819?]. $2,000 to $3,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 148: Pablo Picasso & Fernando de Rojas, La Célestine, First Edition, Paris, 1971. $30,000 to $40,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 201: Omar Khayyam & Edward Fitzgerald, Rubaiyat, William Bell Scott's copy of the First Edition, London, 1859. $20,000 to $30,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 223: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, First Edition, extra-illustrated with hand-colored plates by Palinthorpe, London, 1861. $7,000 to $9,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 248: L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, First Edition, inscribed by the illustrator, Chicago & New York, 1900. $20,000 to $30,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 305: Tycho Brahe & Pierre Gassendi, Tychonis Brahei Vita, Paris, 1654. From the Collection of Owen Gingerich. $8,000 to $12,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 338: Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Almagestum Novum, two folio volumes, Bologna, 1651. From the Collection of Owen Gingerich. $8,000 to $10,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 350: Tobias Cohn, Ma'aseh Toviyyah, first edition, Venice, 1707-8. $3,000 to $5,000.Swann, Apr. 22: Lot 359: Alan Turing, Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence, first edition, Edinburgh, 1950. $3,000 to $5,000.
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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 -
Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: BELLEFOREST (François de). La cosmographie universelle de tout le monde. €12,000 to €15,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: DESNOS (Louis Charles). Mappe-monde, ou Carte Generale de la Terre. €5,000 to €6,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: BLAEU (Willem Janszoon & Joan). Theatrum Sabaudiae. €18,000 to €20,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: LINASSI. Ferdinando Ie Maria Anna Carolina nel Litorale in Settembre 1844. €4,000 to €5,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: AMBROSOLI (Francesco). Monumento a Francesco Primo in Vienna. €3,000 to €4,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: Plano de la plaza de Mesina y de su ciudadel y castiglios. €5,000 to €6,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: ROCKSTUHL (Alois Gustav), GILLE (Florent A.). 78 Lithographies du Musée de Tzarskoe-Selo. €1,000 to €1,500.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: Chtchedrovski, Ignatiy Stepanovitch. €2,000 to €3,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: DE BRUYN (Cornelis). Voyage au Levant. €3,000 to €5,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: ABI ISHAQ AHMAD B. IBRAHIM AL-THAʿLABI (M. 1035) : TROISIÈME VOLUME DU KASHF WA-L-BAYAN ʻAN TAFSIRI AL-QURʼAN. €3,000 to €5,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: DESNOS (Louis Charles). L’Afrique. €3,000 to €4,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: DE BRUYN (Cornelis). Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes orientales. €1,500 to €2,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: DESNOS. (Louis Charles). Amérique septentrionale et Méridionale. €4,000 to €5,000.Gros & Delettrez, Apr. 23: ÉLIOT (J.B.) ; MONDHARE (Louis Joseph). Carte du théatre de la guerre actuel entre les anglais et les treize Colonies Unies de l'Amérique Septentrionale. €5,000 to €6,000.
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Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 748. Second volume of Blaeu's atlas featuring 89 maps of the Americas and Asia (1642) Est. $12,000 - $15,000Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 12. A world map with popular cartographic myths and unique embellishments (1788) Est. $3,000 - $3,750Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 30. One of the most sought-after charts from Cellarius' work (1708) Est. $1,200 - $1,500Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 38. Anti-Vietnam War persuasive cartography on a velvet poster (1971) Est. $350 - $425Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 43. Ortelius' influential map of the New World - second plate (1584) Est. $4,750 - $6,000Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 95. Scarce German map illustrating the French & Indian War (1755) Est. $8,000 - $9,500Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 149. Bachmann's dramatic view of the Mid-Atlantic region (1864) Est. $1,200 - $1,500Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 373. De Jode's very rare map of Europe with costumed figures (1593) Est. $6,000 - $7,500Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 674. De Bry's Petits Voyages, Part VII with all plates and map of Sri Lanka (1606) Est. $1,400 - $1,700Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 704. The first printed map devoted to the Pacific in full contemporary color (1589) Est. $7,500 - $9,000Old World Auctions (April 23):
Lot 734. Superb hand-colored image of the Tree of Jesse (1502) Est. $700 - $850
Rare Book Monthly
Google’s Froogle: Is It There Yet?
By Michael Stillman
There is a way to have your listings picked up by the world's most popular and powerful search engine, and shown on one of the most heavily trafficked websites in existence. They estimate that "millions" of people go there everyday. They will even pick up listings from your own website if you wish. So what does this site charge for providing this incredible level of visibility? 8%? 15%? 20%? Guess again. The answer is nothing. Zero percent. No percentage points, no listing fees, no cost-per-click. Nothing at all.
Welcome to Froogle, the shopping search service put out by the world's most popular search engine, Google. If all of this sounds too good to be true, it isn't. Google is an odd duck. They seem to be almost entirely focused on creating better products, not on making money from them. That may sound like a formula for disaster, but in Google's case, it has worked. They have made their primary product, their search engine, better than any of their competitors', thereby generating a huge audience. While other search engines focused on ways to sell listings, or at least advertisements that looked suspiciously like listings, Google focused on providing better search results. As a result, Google became far and away the most popular search engine. When they finally did decide to draw advertising revenue from their searches, they placed the ads to the side where viewers could clearly tell they were ads, not search results. It didn’t matter. Google's reach had become so great that advertisers rushed to buy this space because Google had by far the largest audience.
On December 11, 2002, Google launched its shopping site. In Google's typical, understated style, there was no great fanfare. While there must be thousands of shopping sites out there, most claiming to be the greatest place ever to buy whatever they are selling, Google made no outrageous claims. Promotion was minimal. They called their shopping site "Froogle", a clever play on the name "Google" and "frugal", and clearly labeled it as a "beta" site. "Beta" is simply tech talk for "still under development". To this day, Froogle is still labeled a "beta" site. Nevertheless, millions of books can be found through this site. Not as many books as can be found on Abebooks, not as many as on Alibris or Amazon, and naturally not as many as the meta book searches like AddAll can find, but Froogle is a force everyone in the book business needs to watch.
You might think this race is over. With the power of Google behind it, and the unbeatable pricing offered, it's just a matter of time before Froogle will dominate online book sales. Not so fast. In time, Google became far and away the most popular search engine. However, Google accomplished this by offering a clearly superior product. That cannot be said about Froogle, at least not yet. I would bet that most of you who are reading this article regularly use Google when you want to find information on the internet. I would also bet that few of you use Froogle when you want to find a book for sale on the internet. There is a reason. To understand why Froogle has not yet become the Google of internet shopping, you need to look at what Froogle is and isn't, what it does well and what it doesn't.