Rare Book Monthly Articles - March - 2009 Issue

The World Divides

The World Divides

By Bruce McKinney At the recent three day ABAA book fair in San Francisco buyers and browsers turned out in substantial numbers to renew their love affair with works on paper. The show, which is first a pre-show dealer-to-dealer event on Friday morning becomes an open-to-the-public free-for-all in the afternoon that lasts into Sunday. The private fair was by all reports quiet, the public fair well attended although the buying at the low end of expectations. The importance of shows for dealers varies from essential to simply useful. For those who needed a big fair it was mostly disapp...

Book Prices Down 30% Year Over Year at Auction

Book Prices Down 30% Year Over Year at Auction

By Michael Stillman Book prices at auction showed a continuing sharp decline during the first two months of 2009. The median price at auction for the period was 31% lower than for the same perio...

AE:  An Update with Destiny

AE: An Update with Destiny

By Bruce McKinney Over the past seven years AE has evolved. It was first a database of 151,000 historical records and a nascent online publication about books. It began in 2002 by covering pri...

Lincoln Speech Tops Auction Sales at Over $3.4 Million

Lincoln Speech Tops Auction Sales at Over $3.4 Million

By Michael Stillman It took only 43 days of 2009 for last year's top price paid at auction in the book and manuscript category to be surpassed. The results could not be more fitting. The item wa...

Former ABA President Sentenced to 28 Months in Prison

Former ABA President Sentenced to 28 Months in Prison

By Michael Stillman In yet another case of a highly respected bibliophile being caught in a massive theft of rare books, longtime bookseller David Slade of the UK was sentenced to 28 months in p...

High Crimes and Misdemeanors:  The Case of the Overdue Library Book

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case of the Overdue Library Book

By Michael Stillman It's unusual for an overdue library book to make national news, and hopefully, as the dust settles on the case from Independence, Iowa, it once again will be. Here is one of ...

A Long and Winding Road

A Long and Winding Road

By Bruce McKinney An almost two hundred year old bound volume of Poughkeepsie newspapers that once was the property of the local Adriance Library, then owned for decades by a Poughkeepsie person...

Alibris Sees Holiday Sales Increase

Alibris Sees Holiday Sales Increase

By Michael Stillman Alibris, the Emeryville, California, based internet book listing site announced they had bucked the trend by increasing sales during the recent holiday season. Alibris report...

Strange Book Title Finalists; AbeBooks Latest Top 10

Strange Book Title Finalists; AbeBooks Latest Top 10

By Michael Stillman The Bookseller magazine has announced the six finalists for its 31st annual Oddest Book Title of the Year award. These are titles that were not meant to make you laugh, which...

Wikis, The Next Step

Wikis, The Next Step

By Bruce McKinney Every few days someone sees past the existing world of books, manuscripts and ephemera into the new world of Wiki Bibliographies where material is grouped by relationship, contex...

Book Collecting Conference March 26-27 at Brigham Young University

Book Collecting Conference March 26-27 at Brigham Young University

By Michael Stillman The sixth annual A. Dean Larson Book Collecting Conference will be held on March 26 and 27 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. This edition includes three pre-confere...

Fourteen New Catalogues Reviewed

Fourteen New Catalogues Reviewed

There are 14 new bookseller catalogues up for review this month. Martayan Lan offers a spectacular collection of books from the 15th through the 19th centuries. Helen Kahn and Associates offers cen...

Rare Book Monthly

  • 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.
  • RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide RareBookBuyer.comWe Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    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'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts Sotheby'sSell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    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

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions