Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2024 Issue

Welcome to our new world

RBH by the numbers

RBH by the numbers

Welcome to our new world

 

Collectible paper, né rare books and manuscripts, has been transforming the markets that have traditionally sold them.  Show dealers now can fit a thousand interesting examples in two briefcases to sell at face-to-face events that they-themselves are becoming fewer and more concentrated.  An auction house, in one case, made their bones selling farm equipment, now sell manuscripts and paper* interspersed with dog-eared transmission manuals.  There’s the sense that, if the market is willing, they’ll sell ‘em. The trick was once to find the customer.  Now the hustle is to build strong mailing lists.  With them in hand, they convert names into transactions. Welcome to 2024!

 

The very notion of an online listing site was only a gleam in developers’ eyes thirty years ago.  Now Abe and Amazon dominate the less-than-collectible book market, vanquishing the once common old and rare bookshops, leaving local libraries to be the natural heirs to what bookstores once relied upon: the steady local flow of bags and boxes of books and paper that reluctant owners wanted to part with humanely.

 

For wannabes in the book game, cataloging for many has become a caricature of what it was as online Svengalis cut and paste their way to listing heaven without ever knowing anything about what they describe.

 

As to the serious, the serious appreciate the serious. The top tier of dealers and most auction houses draw the line between the prattling hordes who don’t know the difference between caviar and sardines.  

 

To do so, they invest in serious research. 

 

And this is our reason for being, to provide the deep, complex and quick knowledge that was once the highly valued output of the best dealers and cataloging minds in the field. Today they often rely on our services.

 

To stay ahead of the curve we’re already adding 2 million more lots from the smaller, regional and specialist auctions that recognized years ago that ephemera would be collectible paper’s future.

 

By the numbers today, we are home to 33,109 completed book and paper auctions and 14,229,329 lots, AND now celebrating 22 years in building RBH..

 

Thank you for your support.


Posted On: 2024-09-02 01:02
User Name: jaysnider

Thank you for creating this a building it continually.


Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby's
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    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
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    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Leland Little, Jan. 22: The First Issue of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will, In Extremely Scarce Binding.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Knight's An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Locke's Important Treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: The Richly Illustrated First French Edition of Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Orientales.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Scarce First Issue of An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, Finely Bound and With Celebrated John Speed Map.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Humphrey's An Historical Account, Complete with Scarce Folding Maps.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Chamberlain's Scarce Civil War Memoir The Passing of the Armies.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: A Rare Photograph of David Bruce Brown and #48 Fiat.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: George Cruikshank (England, 1792-1878), Archive of Sketches, Notes, and Letters.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Extremely Scarce Copy of Die Samländische Ode (The Samland Ode), Signed by Max Pechstein.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Andy Warhol's The Thirteen Most Wanted Men Exhibition Catalogue.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Edward Ruscha (American, b. 1937), Every Building on the Sunset Strip.
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