By Michael Stillman
With the close of another year, it is time to look back at the highest priced books and related ephemera at auction last year. We have scoured the results at all of the major auction houses and a great many smaller ones to come up with the AE 500 top prices at auction for 2007.
Five items made it into the million-dollar category in 2007, down from seven the previous year. However, at the top, number one exceeded last year's top price of just over $5 million by fourfold. Particularly interesting was the price at the bottom of the list -- number 500. That figure wa...
By Bruce McKinney
I have for several months been thinking about the future of newspapers. My family owned weeklies in upstate New York for fifty years and regularly, at the dinner table while I ...
By Michael Stillman
It was the sale of this century, a one-item auction at Sotheby's in New York. At sale was one of the earlier versions of the Magna Carta, written by hand in 1297. The Magna ...
By Frank Bequaert
My wife Lucia and I run an antiquarian book business in Fitzwilliam New Hampshire. Our shop is a quarter mile from the Post Office which makes it convenient for mailing pack...
By Bruce McKinney
For more than three years, I have been searching the internet for "re-appearances" of books, manuscripts and ephemera printed [and or written] by Joel Munsell, the 19th century ...
By Michael Stillman
AbeBooks has issued its lists of the bestselling books, most expensive books, and various other "top 10 and 25" lists, such as top authors, signed books, and used books. As...
By Michael Stillman
BookFinder.com has released its list of the top 10 most sought-after old books of 2007. Making the BookFinder list requires a combination of being both highly desired and ha...
By Renée Magriel Roberts
It's 11 PM and I've finally finished stacking orders for tomorrow, dispensed with all today's correspondence, special-ordered books, finished and uploaded today's data ...
By Bruce McKinney
The February issue of AE Monthly will include the second issue of The Bookseller's Comet. It will include printed
material and objects offered by members pertaining to "A C...
By Michael Stillman
We have come to expect that some books will sell at auction for well beyond their estimates. Sometimes an auction house may not appreciate the book's importance, at other ti...
By Bruce McKinney
A hundred and fifty years ago candidates stayed home. Today the voters do and who can blame them. The debates in
2007 confirm that the run for President is nothing more tha...
By Michael Stillman
Rare Book Review, the magazine of the rare and antiquarian book trade, recently announced the winners of their inaugural Rare Book Review Awards. Winners were selected by a...
We begin the new year with 19 book catalogue reviews in Section Two. Dragon Books has issued their first catalogue. The Antiquariaat Forum offers books from Europe and the Far East, Libreria de Ant...
High Bids Win, Dec. 4 – 19: Lot 212. Kelsey Letterpress
High Bids Win, Dec. 4 – 19: Wood & Metal Type. Many fonts and faces.
High Bids Win, Dec. 4 – 19: Print Shop Miscellany including type, tools, and equipment.
Sotheby's Fine Books, Manuscripts & More Available for Immediate Purchase
Sotheby’s: William Shakespeare. The Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, 1960. 7,210 USD
Sotheby’s: Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol, First Edition, 1843. 17,500 USD
Sotheby’s: William Golding. Lord of the Flies, First Edition, 1954. 5,400 USD
Sotheby's Fine Books, Manuscripts & More Available for Immediate Purchase
Sotheby’s: Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Inscribed First Edition, 1872. 25,000 USD
Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Hobbit, First Edition, 1937. 12,000 USD
Sotheby’s: John Milton. Paradise Lost, 1759. 5,400 USD
Bonhams, Dec. 18: A Very Fine Composite Atlas Magnificently Illuminated and Heightened with Gold in a Fine Contemporary Hand Throughout. $300,000 - $500,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Saint-Exupéry's Revised Ending for Wind, Sand and Stars. $40,000 - $60,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Edith Wharton's Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1924. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Salinger on the Glass Family and on Detachment. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Fanny Burney's Groundbreaking First Novel. Evelina, Or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Kafka's Earliest Extant Piece of Writing. Autograph Note Signed ("Franz Kafka"). $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Wagner Signed "Ride of the Valkries." $6,000 - $9,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Dickens on the Death of Little Nell. $5,000 - $8,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Sylvia Plath's Copy of Joy of Cooking. $4,000 - $6,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Walt Whitman and Friends: Whitman to James Russell Lowell. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Dec. 18: Walt Whitman and Friends: The Genesis of his Lincoln Lectures. $6,000 - $9,000
