Books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera are real but their world has, for years, been losing locations on Main Streets, High Streets and Broadways around the world. Why? Parts of it are, [1] changing tastes, [2] rising prices, [3] thinning markets, [4] the Internationalization of these markets, and [5] the aging of core buyers and collectors. These changes have remade the field into a more event based business with a succession of collector/collecting shows and auctions to capture the attention of the everyday market.
The decline of shops has long been understood to be a disaster becau...
Occasionally my wife Jenny and I get a few days to a few weeks away. Recently we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and spent two weeks in Japan. The trip reprised part of my first trip to A...
Hola! We finally did it. We went around Cape Horn after reading about it and talking about it for years and it was a grand adventure. We are two old traditional sailors/booksellers, who are getting...
Three years ago, in the summer of 2014, an assistant in the Print Department of the Boston Public Library noticed two old prints were missing. This was not a small matter. One was a Durer valued at...
Even though there are a great many companies that advertise themselves as insurance specialists for collectors, when you visit their sites you find there is precious little specific information pro...
Bookfinder.com has published its list of the most sought after titles from 2016. It's an eclectic bunch. Bookfinder is a meta-search engine, that is, it searches multiple book listing sites, rather...
Once a year or so I receive an unpretty box that is wrapped in a nuclear-proof way to ensure the contents arrive in good order. The shipper is one of the great holdouts to today’s upscale packing ...
Few book thefts are resolved by a guilty conscience, particularly when the victim doesn't even know the book was stolen. Usually, the guilty conscience only comes into play after the thief is caugh...
Frank Herrmann, writer, publisher and auctioneer died at his home In Essex on Sunday, a month short of his 90th birthday, following a long battle with illness.
After a distinguished career in p...
After a rough first half of their fiscal year (year ending March 31, 2017), Scholium Group, parent of English bookseller Shapero Rare Books, reported conditions have stabilized and are now looking ...
This article is one of three previews of international sales I've covered this month. Il Ponte Casa d’Aste, the Milan-based auction house that was founded in 1974, will be holding a sale of Books a...
Why do we read travel books instead of travelling ourselves? Well, only an old book like Paul Erdman Isert’s Voyages en Guinée dans les îles Caraibes en Amérique (Maradan, 1793) will take you to t...
For the month of May, I’ve written three previews of international events. One of these is a sale by Kedem Auctions, an auction house headquartered in Jerusalem that was established in 2008. The na...
Which books are bringing the highest prices on the listing sites right now? AbeBooks, the largest of them all, has released their list of the top 10 highest prices paid on their site during the fir...
This month I’ve written three previews of international sales, one of which is Sotheby’s sale of Travel, Atlases, Maps Natural History on May 9, 2017 in London. One hundred twenty-eight lots are o...
A war was waged between Amazon and the states over the issue of sales tax collection for almost two decades. It was a pitched battle, with states passing legislation, going to court, and looking to...
Dates have been set for the annual Rose City Book and Paper Fair. This is a favorite in the City of Roses, aka Portland, Oregon. This year's fair with be the 11th, and will draw 50+ dealers, and an...
This month we review eight new booksellers' catalogues recently published. There isn't much in common between them other than they all offer books. Dr. Jorn Gunther Rare Books has a catalogue of "V...
![Frank Herrmann [1927-2017]](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/ArticleImages/ef0ff46b-3de1-49d7-bda2-6b619df19566.JPG)
