• Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2015 Issue

A Few more Tips for Sellers from the Dealer’s Daughter

A good quality magnifying glass is one of the book world's best sales tools.

I was plowing though what I call my current inventory recently when I realized I have the taste and book wisdom of a hundred year old man, and not just any hundred year old man, but my father, Morton (Jock) Netzorg who for fifty years was a partner in Detroit’s Cellar Book Shop. My dad was born in 1912, and if alive today he’d be 103 this month.

 

Though he is no longer with us I realized that along with some of his books I also inherited a great many of his predilections: Who else among us has the Monk and the Dancer by Arthur Cosslett Smith on their bedside table?

 

Although I never did acquire a taste for Jurgen by James Branch Cabell which was my Dad’s favorite work of fiction, many of his views and ideas about buying and selling books have stayed with me for lo these many years.

 

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from him is people don’t just want the book or print or map or photo, they want a story that goes with it too.

 

So that can be a story about the author, such as Cervantes was already 57 when the first part of Don Quixote came out in 1605, and he was 67 by the time the second part was issued, illustrating that some of the best writers do their best work in their later years. Or it may be a story about the illustrator or the publisher – for example - Bennett Cerf was a founder of Random House, on the winning side of the landmark 1933 obscenity case for Joyce’s Ulysses and in 1957 was influential in publishing the first and endless subsequent editions of the “Cat In the Hat” by Dr. Seuss. This was the book which started a whole new era in the teaching of reading. Houghton Mifflin published the education edition, sold to schools, and Random House published the trade edition, sold in bookstores.

 

Cerf, who surprisingly is today best remembered as a humorist, is long gone from Random House, but his story and the story of this publishing house doesn’t get old. So when you’re selling a book with a Random House imprint, be it common as dirt, tell them about the company’s place in the history of American publishing and Bennett Cerf and you’ll be more likely to make the sale.

 

I admit I was spoiled from the start. I had someone older and smarter to guide and vet my interests. Today we have soulless mathematical algorithms, suggesting if you like A you might also like B, but I had my own in house recommender of what to read next. He was the genuine article, a flesh and blood reader who was way ahead of me in the taste department.

 

Said my Dad: “If you like Verve - the now very pricey French art magazine published in the 1930s, you might also like Flair - the eclectic and visually exciting American magazine edited by Fleur Cowles in the 1950s.”

 

How right he was.

 

So this is just a reminder from the old school, links are not just electronic, they are written and oral too. If you have one thing for sale, and it connects strongly to something else, don’t forget to suggest the other. Even if you’re Internet only, mentioning you have related items helps make an add-on sale or a repeat buyer.

 

To some of my father’s basic methods I have added a few ideas of my own picked up along the way by working in other bookstores, archives, libraries, print and map shops, and purveyors of paper of all kinds in the pre and post Internet age.

 

Though many of you are Internet only dealers, one useful tip relates to what in the olden days was called “retail” i.e. selling face-to-face-live-and-in-person.

 

Whether you are doing business from in the back row of some third rate flea market or in the grandest upscale shops or fanciest book shows, the best sales tool you’ll ever acquire is a good magnifying glass.

 

The better the glass (preferably one with an ivory handle scrimshawed with a spouting whale) the more you will sell.

 

As Mies van der Rohe famously said, “God is in the details” and nothing brings out the details better than a large high quality glass. It’s not enough to have a good glass, you must learn to actually physically put it in the hand of the customer.

 

Whether you are squatting on your faux Navaho blanket in the dust or laying out priceless treasures on a rubbed rosewood counter stand next to your customer (side–by- side), place the magnifier in his hand saying in your best conspiratorial tone, “Well let’s take a closer look.”

 

This works for books, but it works even better for maps and prints, especially older ones with fine engraving.

 

The magnifying glass opens up a whole new world of minute detail, the kind of tiny quirky elegance that few customers have taken the time to see before. In their hand (not yours) it focuses attention on the merchandise the way your own words will never do.

 

This works best if you already know what’s there to see – such as the exquisite finesse of intricate Maori carving in some of the Cook’s Voyages plates or the tiny but important credit line that might otherwise be missed without it.

 

Those photogravures from the Harriman Expedition to Alaska say “Curtis” underneath the image - as in Edward Sheriff Curtis who went on to become a celebrated photographer of Native Americans. The Harriman Expedition was his first big assignment and the place where he met some of the most famous scientists and naturalists of his day as well as many very rich captains of industry that would help to finance and publish his later photographic efforts.

 

Back in the 1980s I did some teaching at Lahaina Printsellers, which in those days was probably the only fine antiquarian map dealer located in a tourist mall side by side with establishments selling chocolate covered macadamia nuts and Aloha attire.

 

Printsellers was done up to look like a 19th century English gentleman’s library right down to the brass headed nails in the leather upholstered club chairs and tasteful green and gold color scheme. People who would never have entered a gallery or map shop on the Mainland trooped through the doors. It was enchanting while it lasted.

 

There I was in the back room plowing though a pile of images from Picturesque America (which we had by the yard, in multiples of dozens), when, with the help of my trusty magnifying glass I noticed for the first time that one of the Western scenes had a Thomas Moran credit line.

 

Now this was a little black and white print no more than 8x10” and shall we say at that scale it lacked curb appeal. However, Thomas Moran was a famous American painter best known for his gigantic landscapes of the American West, which to this day bring astronomical prices at auction.

 

Though these prints had lingered in our inventory for years and seldom sold, the minute the sales staff (composed of surfers, housewives, substitute teachers and former jewelry vendors from Las Vegas) learned from me in tones of reverent awe, that this particular print was by Moran and could tell about this painter and his work themselves, the images literally flew out the door. After all, after we told the story and they held the glass in their own hand, who could resist the opportunity to own an authentic Moran at a price an average person could afford?

 

One more tip about the magnifying glass, if you’re selling in the open stall or show, tie it to the table. A magnifying glass has an almost magical attraction to little boys about the age of seven who will either steal it, implore their father to buy it, or use it to set a fire and burn down your stand.

 

--------------------

For an earlier installment about the dealer’s life in the pre-internet age and some time tested tips to sellers and would-be sellers of books and antiquarian paper see the April 2011 issue (click here) Please note that the email address given in that article has changed. The present address is wailukusue@gmail.com.

 

To see the current offerings of Lahaina Printsellers, now mainly good quality reproductions of Hawaii maps and ephemera, visit their site www.printsellers.com.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD

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