It is with great sadness and disappointment that I am letting you know the Grolier Club decided to not honor my agreement with the Executor Director to have the most comprehensive, and instructive, exhibition of forgeries ever organized. This exhibition was scheduled several years ago for January 2026. It was subtitled "The Inside Story of How the Forgers Fool the Experts".
The exhibition was intended to introduce my forgery collection - the most comprehensive in the world - and its intended donation to the Grolier Club. Without this exhibition, and the collection, the opportunity for the Grolier Club to be the center for forgery detection research will be deliberately lost. Numerous phone calls and emails with Grolier leadership over the past five weeks have elicited no desire to change the situation.
It had been agreed that this exhibition would be a story line of how the major forgeries fooled the experts, how too many frauds like the Hitler Diaries were accepted as accurate history, and it was specifically agreed that I would dete1mine the original materials and layouts to tell these stories that I was personally intimately involved in. The lessons learned from the actions of the forgers and victims were a critical part.
A meeting to review all of the exhibit cases and explain the flow of the exhibits, was immediately cut sho1t by Grolier staff stating that they now required 24 inches or more of blank space at the top of exhibit cases and that 25% to 50% of the original pieces and signage had to be eliminated. All of the major forgery cases would have 50% of the exhibits removed, which I made clear was not possible and not what was agreed to with the Executive Director. Grolier staff made clear there would be no fu1ther discussion. Grolier leadership made no effort to change the situation.
Having in my 54 years as a Grolier member, designed and laid out three major Grolier exhibitions from my own collections, as well as numerous museum exhibitions, with outstanding reviews, including the first major New York Times review for a Grolier show, I am very experienced in this area.
I am making you aware of this because of the publicity about the intended donation of my forgery collection to the Grolier Club. While a small part has already been donated, in good faith, the overwhelming majority and all of the pieces in the exhibition have not. This includes iconic forgeries from Shakespeare to every modem forger, including the most comprehensive group of the Mormon forger, including the Oath of a Freeman. These were intended to be donated after the now cancelled exhibition.
The main collection will be established at an appropriate research facility in the future and publicly announced.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 1: Bob Dylan, his high school classmate's yearbook with his senior portrait, signed and inscribed to her, 1959. $10,000 to $20,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 1: Bob Dylan, his high school classmate's yearbook with his senior portrait, signed and inscribed to her, 1959. $10,000 to $20,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 4: Various entertainers, Group of 30 items, signed or inscribed, various dates. $1,500 to $2,500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 27: John Adams, Autograph Letter Signed to Benjamin Rush introducing Archibald Redford, Paris, 1783. $35,000 to $50,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 36: Robert Gould Shaw, Autograph Letter Signed to his father from Camp Andrew, Boston, 1861. $10,000 to $15,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 53: Martin Luther King Jr., Time magazine cover, signed and inscribed "Best Wishes," 1957. $5,000 to $7,500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 127: Paul Gauguin, Autograph Letter regarding payment for paintings, with woodcut letterhead, 1900. $6,000 to $9,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 169: Suck: First European Sex Paper, complete group of eight issues, 1969-1974. $800 to $1,200.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 173: Black Panthers, The Racist Dog Policemen Must Withdraw Immediately From Our Communities, poster, 1969. $2,000 to $3,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 187: Marc Attali & Jacques Delfau, Les Erotiques du Regard, first edition, Paris, 1968. $300 to $500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 213: Andy Warhol, Warhol's Index Book, first printing, New York, 1967. $800 to $1,200.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 215: Cookie Mueller, Archive of 17 items, including 4 items inscribed and signed. $3,000 to $4,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 249: Jamie Reid, The Ten Lessons / The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle; Sex Pistols, chromogenic print with collage, signed, circa 1980. $20,000 to $30,000.
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby's 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
Sotheby's 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
Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
![Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/e47bb03e-3f3d-4f68-9e79-b0b2739ca87c.jpg "<b>Dominic Winter, Apr. 9:</b> Bible [English]. [<i>The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament,</i> 1562]. £3,000-5,000")
