Rare Book Monthly Articles - May - 2008 Issue

AbeBooks Institutes Charge On Shipping

AbeBooks Institutes Charge On Shipping

By Michael Stillman Few issues in the book trade cause anywhere near the controversy we see when AbeBooks announces a price increase. In a sense, this is a great tribute to Abe, as it shows the importance of the role they play in the old and rare book business today. Nonetheless, Abe receives few plaudits when one of these increases is announced. These are tough times for anyone not in the oil business, and while rate increases may be grudgingly accepted while sales are booming, sellers understandably see these increased commissions as coming straight out of their hides when sales are stag...

Book Fairs:  The World Intrudes

Book Fairs: The World Intrudes

By Bruce McKinney You can be forgiven for thinking that book fairs are unchanging, even immutable and to the casual observer they may look that way. They are in fact a battleground of changing ...

<i>In The News:</i> The Most Expensive American Letter Ever Auctioned, BookFinder, Via Libri & More

<i>In The News:</i> The Most Expensive American Letter Ever Auctioned, BookFinder, Via Libri & More

By Michael Stillman A fabulous Lincoln letter, magnificent both for its content and price, broke all kinds of U.S. auction records at Sotheby's last month. The President wrote the 1864 letter ...

Collecting in the Known and Unknown World

Collecting in the Known and Unknown World

By Bruce McKinney This is an article written to accompany this month's issue of the Comet - whose focus is Pamphlets, Broadsides and Ephemera. History is the imprecise masquerading as the cer...

Why Trade Globally?

Why Trade Globally?

By Renée Magriel Roberts We live and work on Cape Cod, a beautiful place, with more temperate weather than most of New England during the year. From an economic perspective, however, the Cape ha...

AbeBooks Purchases Chrislands, Launches Italian Website

AbeBooks Purchases Chrislands, Launches Italian Website

By Michael Stillman April was a busy month for leading online used bookseller AbeBooks.com. First, on April 9, they announced the purchase of Chrislands, a firm that builds, hosts and maintains ...

The Volkmann Collection Concludes with a Sale May 8th

The Volkmann Collection Concludes with a Sale May 8th

By Bruce McKinney On May 8th, the third and final portion of the Daniel G. Volkmann, Jr. Collection of rare and collectible printed material will pass before the gaze of dealers and collectors and...

Do You Have A First Edition  <i>Origin Of Species?</i> If So, The Darwin Census Wants You

Do You Have A First Edition <i>Origin Of Species?</i> If So, The Darwin Census Wants You

By Michael Stillman Do you have a copy of the first edition of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species? If so, the Darwin Census is looking for you. The Darwin Census is conducting a worldwi...

The Gold Rush Book Fair May 17th in Grass Valley, California

The Gold Rush Book Fair May 17th in Grass Valley, California

By Bruce McKinney As certain as the arrival of spring birds the Gold Rush Book Fair enters the calendars of those who live in northern California, who visit and who buy, sell, collect and trade t...

Online Scratch and Sniff:  Google Offers Some Unbelievable Features…For A Day

Online Scratch and Sniff: Google Offers Some Unbelievable Features…For A Day

By Michael Stillman A few weeks ago, I discovered that Google had added a wonderful new feature to my Gmail account. It seemed too good to be true. They were offering a service that would backda...

The June Issue of the Comet Announced:  The Book as Art and Object

The June Issue of the Comet Announced: The Book as Art and Object

By Bruce McKinney The subject of the June issue of the Comet will be The Book as Art and Object. Books are valued for many reasons. Some individuals collect a field, others first editions or eve...

Nineteen New Catalogues Reviewed In <i>Section Two</i>

Nineteen New Catalogues Reviewed In <i>Section Two</i>

This month we review 19 new booksellers' catalogues in Section Two. For those who like very old books, Lex Antiqua has incunabula and other books almost as old. Frits Knuf Antiquarian Books has ref...

Rare Book Monthly

  • RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
  • 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
  • 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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