Rare Book Monthly Articles - September - 2011 Issue

The season

The Fall Approaches

Heading into fall buyers and sellers will be meeting head one in a series of auctions that will illuminate the strength and direction of the market.  A great deal is at stake.  As has been the case all year auction houses are handling increasing volume while recently experiencing a marginally lower percentage of completed sales [see charts].  A reasonable conclusion is that reserves are bit higher than buyers are comfortable to reach.  The why is less certain.  One interpretation is that the market, while orderly, is having trouble absorbing increasing volume.  Another is that the economy i...

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Custer 134

Sometimes A Great Notion - An Intriguing Auction

Swann, the New York auctioneers, are holding the first of three scheduled sales of material from the collection of Eric Caren, the life-long bibliophile.  The title of the sale is “How History Unfo...

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Zoschak1

Using Reference Works Can Help Enhance Value

Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books (ABAA) in Alameda, CA is well known in the book world as a dealer in Dickens and a specialist in other rare and collectible authors writing in English. He also has a ...

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Twainauc

AE Makes It Easy to Search for Book Auction Listings

The fall book auction season will be starting very soon now. Fall is traditionally the busiest time of the year for auctions. After Labor Day in the U.S., almost everyone has returned home from the...

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Weist

Trifecta in Beverly Hills

Heritage Auctions is holding three auctions in Beverly Hills in mid-September and each of them will be of interest to those who covet valuable paper:

On Monday, September 12th The Jerry Weist Coll...

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E-catalogues

eCatalogues:  Coming to a Computer Near You

This month there are nine eCatalogues from AE Members.  If you are at least a research member you can post catalogues as you issue them and we are more and more closely linking them to AE Monthly. ...

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Bordersbye

It's Been a Tough Month for Large Book Retailers

This has not been a good month for large, chain bookstores, especially so for their investors. Physical retailing has been battling online selling for a decade, and physical books have been battlin...

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Flexibility

Perspective on Nine Years

AE is celebrating its 9th birthday this September 3rd and it seems like only yesterday that we began.  Many of our original members are members still, a testament to their patience and our unending...

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John j o'brien

Bookseller Pleads Guilty to Income Tax Evasion

Why? It's a question John J. O'Brien must have asked himself a thousand times. When you make millions of dollars, there are so many things you can do with your money. One of those is to go into the...

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Butch cassidy

Dead Men Tell Tales

In fact they won’t shut up and apparently also do not die.  Lest you assume from the headline that death has been conquered the answer in one particular case is alleged to be stayed but not stopped...

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Stpaullibrary

St. Paul Woman Sentenced for Stealing 1,400 Books

A love of books is a wonderful thing. It can lead one to knowledge, to an appreciation of all things. Books make us better people. Then there is Amanda Cortright. Her love of books led her down the...

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Inness2

George Inness:  Picture Perfect

I recently purchased a painting on eBay for $1,182.  It’s small and faintly familiar.  The artist is George Inness and the subject appears to be the Catskills, possibly looking south.  The underlyi...

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Palmerstudents

Cursive Suffers Another Deadly Blow

There is one less subject schoolchildren in Indiana will have to master when school reopens this fall - cursive. For younger readers unfamiliar with that term, it has nothing to do with bad languag...

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Cats09-11

Nine Catalogues Reviewed in Section 2

This month we review nine new booksellers' catalogues. Sotheran's boasts a catalogue few can match - a 250th anniversary catalogue with at least one entry for each of the past 250 years. Hordern Ho...

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Rare Book Monthly

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    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> SMITH, CHRISTOPHER WEBB. 1793-1871. <i>Indian Ornithology.</i> [Patna, India]: 1828. $50,000 to $80,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> DUPRÉ, LOUIS. 1789-1837. <i>Voyage à Athènes et à Constantinople, ou Collection de portraits, vues et costumes grecs et ottomans.</i> Paris: Dondey-Dupré, 1825. $60,000 to $90,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> ADAMS, JOHN. Autograph Letter Signed ("J Adams"), [to Dr. Perkins?] while recovering from his small pox inoculation, [late-April, 1764]. $30,000 to $50,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> AUSTEN, JANE. Autograph Letter Signed ("J. Austen"), to her sister Cassandra, 4 pp, "Thursday – after dinner," [September 16, 1813,] Henrietta St. $80,000 to $120,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES. 1785-1851. <i>The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories.</i> New York & Philadelphia: J.J. Audubon & J.B. Chevalier, 1840-1844. $20,000 to $30,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> DODWELL, EDWARD. 1767-1832. <i>Views in Greece.</i> London: Rodwell and Martin, 1821. $20,000 to $30,000.
    <b>Bonhams, Oct. 23:</b> JAMES, JESSE. Autograph Letter Signed ("Jesse W. James"), to Mr. Flood demanding Flood retract spurious accusations, 3 pp, June 5, 1875. $200,000 to $300,000.
  • 8ed26c7a-3b52-49ca-a198-4736fc1036ca 8ef6f8d7-9fa4-402e-9ece-062015b72994 Edd96054-d425-4ff9-90f1-77d04f6eebc3 C1b76f0c-7ae9-4b73-94f6-daded50aef37 7da3c92f-5f9c-475a-8a70-825fb8c55078 Cae7f5a1-5be8-4e09-936b-929b068a5713 F59139ab-f0ad-48e3-90b4-5561541b0add 2a2d6dc0-8d42-45aa-a548-6890d356d9a8 F781da80-0972-4913-95ad-d7090bff5984 522c347e-228c-4ca2-b475-815db852b0d1 82cf80c4-6a9b-48f8-ab46-eb4271370d61 7a58036b-2614-402a-aef8-c70df49ef6ee 0396054a-bc67-4a59-a976-a0e3ebe1ca8c A160d63c-a2d1-4a24-8bde-d5e49c125d79 Ee422374-eb60-4a6f-b742-db6e9fcac6db
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Textile of the Great White Fleet, with portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans & successor Charles Stillman Sperry, 1908. $3,000 to $4,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> William J. Stone, <i>Declaration of Independence,</i> Force printing, 1833. $15,000 to $25,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Shugart family papers including documentation of the Underground Railroad, 63 items, 1838-81. $30,000 to $40,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Records of the Dickinson & Shrewsbury salt works, over 2000 items, with extensive slave labor correspondence, legal records & receipts, bulk 1820-1865. $80,000 to $120,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Gloria Steinem, typescript for her speech <i>Living the Revolution,</i> with related letters and documents, 1941-77. $5,000 to $7,500.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> <i>Liberty Triumphant or the Downfall of Oppression,</i> depicting the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, c. 1774. $12,000 to $18,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, <i>Historia naturae, maxime peregrinae, libris XVI distincta,</i> Antwerp, 1635. $6,000 to $9,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Antonio de Mayorga, manuscript map of Mexico City, 1779. $6,000 to $9,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Thomas L. McKenney & James Hall, <i>History of the Indian Tribes of North America,</i> first edition, 3 volumes, Philadelphia, 1842-44. $25,000 to $35,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Samuel Walker, diary of the entire first cruise of the USS Kineo, a gunboat on the Mississippi, 1854-69. $10,000 to $15,000.
    <b>Swann Auction Galleries Sep 26:</b> Scrapbook on early Stanford football, with letters from Walter Camp, 1893-95 & 1931. $8,000 to $12,000.
  • Fab3962a-5d1a-4f29-98bd-d17efef82ec8 Af3d094a-945e-493a-b3f6-43f3625ac084 A1e56bc6-86c1-47be-8e86-1d7331c522a5 3e965209-33e9-46ed-99e6-a158d77ac9cf 1e9ddfba-fe33-466a-bf3e-a57a34988c68 335253fb-8aa9-415a-a10f-6eff5c0345f5 Fb83a416-3cd1-488f-8aaa-24c4036b7b42 D4646ebf-fee9-4f48-8969-c35abf63c11f 202107cf-6e8a-468f-9cd4-b9a986624526 Ef42ed3b-8264-41fa-ac5b-c1b7e69906b8 494fcf73-2bf8-4780-ac71-db0a732c0237 37eab080-19c2-44d9-a28d-aff4b40f1680 D24d0314-8ddc-4016-93fe-7d94997daf7f A3d2c5cc-5550-4bad-bf6f-a71126667eb5 A96cfa86-ee4f-4a7a-8649-92c28eca31c2 9c36dfcc-b55d-4ce4-850a-a64386983e17
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Roberts, David. Twenty Lithographs of the Holy Land, 19th Century. $2,000 to $4,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Declaration by the Reps. of the United Colonies of N.A. 1775. $8,000 to $12,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Composer Jerome Kern personal Letters, Albums and Other. $15,000 to $25,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Paine, Thomas. <i>Common Sense,</i> London 1776. $8,000 to $12,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Stowe, Harriet Beecher. <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin,</i> Cleveland 1852. $4,000 to $6,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Hobbes, Thomas. <i>Leviathan,</i> 3rd edition, London 1651. $2,000 to $3,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Anno Regni Georgii III. Intolerable Acts and other Bills, 1774. $15,000 to $20,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Wilberforce, William. An Abstract of the Evidence, 5 Letters, and two books. $6,000 to $9,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing and Signed Letters, ca. 1860 $4,000 to $6,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Tolstov, Leo. <i>War and Peace,</i> 5 volumes, 1886. $3,000 to $5,000.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Dickinson, John. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, 1768. $1,500 to $2,500.
    <b>Lark Mason Associates, Aug 8-27:</b> Twain, Mark. <i>Tom Sawyer,</i> 1877 [and] <i>Huckleberry Finn,</i> 1885. $4,000 to $6,000.

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