Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2007 Issue

Where is the new book collector?

Bruce McKinney speaking with John Crichton [r]

Bruce McKinney speaking with John Crichton [r]


By Bruce McKinney


The book collector, who has ever been a solitary creature, is seemingly less visible and hence more difficult to find today. Who's looking? Every dealer on the planet is interested to know who they are. So too are the listing sites and various publications and services that cater to them. These collectors are elusive. You can almost believe they are a vanishing breed, drawn in a thousand directions, all of them away from the collecting of books, manuscripts and ephemera. Almost.

Recently I asked four gray-haired dealers for their perspective on this question. In this case the gray hair is a useful indicator of experience. They are John Windle, Jeffrey Thomas, John Crichton and Michael Good, San Francisco Bay Area book dealers with more than a hundred years of experience between them. Younger folks may not remember the pre-internet world clearly. These men remember it too well, the way we all recall touchdowns scored in high school and the soliloquy delivered in the college play, wistfully and perhaps a bit sanitized. The question I asked "Where is the new book collector" is a seemingly easy question but its one that in the answering tells us as much about the respondent as it does about the collector. The new collector is after all, almost mythical, sightings hardly more common than Loch Ness monsters. But it of course is not the new collector that is hard to find. It's new mintings of the old-style collector that are. Collectors are in fact everywhere and more plentiful than ever. Listing sites such as Abe, Zvab, Biblio, ILAB-ABAA and AE provide a steady flow of orders to sellers. And eBay gavels thousands of books everyday. Traditional auctions sell 200,000 documented lots annually and an untold number of undocumented ones as well. There are plenty of buyers. But these rank and file collectors buy carefully and curb their enthusiasm at the sight of three digits. They are omnipresent and of course very different from the old style collector. They are also the growing backbone of the rare book business. Think of them as Mr. Seventy-five dollars, Madame Cinq-Cent Francs, and [English] fifty-quid.

These dealers clearly miss the old-style collectors who had money, ambition to collect and trust in the dealer to act on their behalf. Such collectors, rare in any era, are increasingly collecting independently, buying more at auction and more often from a range of sellers rather than through a single dealer whose objectif primaire is to represent them. Finding such collectors much less building relationships with them, though never easy, has become very difficult. Even when face to face with such collectors, because encroaching may be poaching and book dealers live inside a world of rigidly protected relationships, they may not feel it appropriate to offer material though it's potentially beneficial to collectors. A collector thinks they are just buying a book while a dealer may see it differently.

So when I ask serious, long respected dealers "where is the new collector" it means something different to them than it does to me, a collector, since I first held an old [if not rare] book fifty years ago. To obtain these interviews I travel with Joe Belk [Cinematographer], an experienced cameraman who will capture the hours of tape we record. This is to be a first attempt on AE to integrate video with the printed word in an article in AE Monthly. Ashley E. Rodholm [film editor] , a senior at Berkeley is to handle the editing.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Freeman’s | Hindman
    Western Manuscripts and Miniatures
    July 8, 2025
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800

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