The New York Antiquarian Book Fairs have come and gone, delivering large crowds and excellent results to the more than three hundred exhibitors who participated in at least one of the three fairs:

 

The 58^th Annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, the New York City Book and Ephemera Fair, and the Manhattan Vintage Book & Ephemera Fair.

 

The 58^th at the Armory was 4 days, the other two both Saturday events.

 

The crowds were robust, the buying mood strong.  These fairs are too often pawns to the weather, economy and political environment but they escaped this year, the occasional cloudy sky.

 

Taken together, they continued New York’s uninterrupted annual reaffirmation of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera as a primary collecting area.  To those in the field this is not news but to the newbies and tire kickers deciding if and what to collect this all adds up to healthy signals.