Prices at auction for lots in the book and paper field inched up 1.5% in 2016. In a year that was most notable for looking essentially like the year before, the median price rose from $266 to $270. The average price dropped an infinitesimal $19 from $2,030 in 2015 to $2,011 in 2016. That represents a decline of less than one-tenth of one percent. For reasons explained in the footnote below*, median price is a better gauge of the market than average.
Even a small increase will be welcome news to those in the trade. It's well known that book prices have been under pressure, with last year...
Daniel Crouch Rare Books of 4 Bury Street, St. James, London has recently opened a shop in New York at 24 East 64th Street. The firm is a specialist in antique atlases, maps, plans, sea charts and...
I grew up in a family where book selling was a well established business. By the time I was a little girl I was drafted into it.
From the 1950s through the mid-60s I was introduced to all the t...
A venerable Italian auction house is making a major move into the field of books, manuscripts, and engravings. Il Ponte (the Bridge) Auction House has been conducting sales in Milan since 1974. Its...
California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to Oakland, California February 10th-12th
The most important rare book fair in California returns to Oakland February 10-12 after its ever...
Once in a while, a long-forgotten collection of books emerges from its hiding place, usually after the death of a very old, unknown collector. Such a collection recently emerged in England, and it ...
Edward Eberstadt Sons was in the 20th century, to quote William Reese who wrote the forward to Mr. Vinson’s interesting book, Edward Eberstadt Sons, Rare Booksellers of Western Americana, “the la...
There is, in the vaults of the private library Boston Athenaeum (BA), a peculiar book with a creepy sentence written in Latin on its front cover: Hic liber Waltonis cute compactus est—this book is ...
Newspaper headlines don’t always do their subjects justice and the Miami Herald was in this predicament recently when it celebrated the continuing generosity of Jay Kislak as he continues to place ...
As technology has transformed the world of works on paper, the value of collectible items has shifted towards things that are aesthetically pleasing. One reason for owning books—the knowledge conta...
Recently I was reading Antiques Arts Weekly and chanced upon a 3-column ad for a Poughkeepsie print. As it’s within my collecting focus I called the advertiser, Holden Antiques, to inquire and Ed...
Livres et Manuscrits is Sotheby’s Paris’ upcoming sale on February 8, 2017 that features a healthy mix of material. From rare autograph documents by French poet Arthur Rimbaud, to medical manuscrip...
Canadian police have asked the public for help in locating a collection of prints and original art. The theft was reported back on September 22, 2016, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not...
Focused collectors of banknotes, stock and bond certificates, coins, and security printing ephemera are likely already aware of the 2-day event taking place this month. But for the person just gett...
Here is a story of a library book theft that is a bit of a head-scratcher. The security must have been slightly lax at the Flower Memorial Library in Watertown, New York, on January 4. Before sound...
This month we have 11 new bookseller catalogues to review. Most have highly targeted subjects, rather than general catalogues or miscellanies. Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller features science, medicine...
