• Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 11,135 USD
    Sotheby’s: Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. 33,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Leo Tolstoy, Clara Bow. War and Peace, 1886. 22,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1902. 7,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Others, 1920-1941. 24,180 USD
  • Gonnelli:
    Auction 55
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    November 26st 2024
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, 23 animal plances,1641. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, Boar Hunt, 1654. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli: Crispijn Van de Passe, The seven Arts, 1637. Starting price 600€
    Gonnelli: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, La Maschera è cagion di molti mali, 1688. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Biribissor’s game, 1804-15. Starting price 2800€
    Gonnelli: Nicolas II de Larmessin, Habitats,1700. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Miniature “O”, 1400. Starting price 1800€
    Gonnelli: Jan Van der Straet, Hunt scenes, 1596. Starting Price 140€
    Gonnelli: Massimino Baseggio, Costantinople, 1787. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Kawanabe Kyosai, Erotic scene lighten up by a candle, 1860. Starting price 380€
    Gonnelli: Duck shaped dropper, 1670. Starting price 800€
  • Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 37: Archive of the pioneering woman artist Arrah Lee Gaul, most 1911-59. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 66: Letter describing the dropping water level at Owens Lake near Death Valley, long before it was drained, Keeler, CA, 26 July 1904. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 102: To Horse, To Horse! My All for a Horse! The Washington Cavalry, illustrated Civil War broadside, Philadelphia, 1862. $4,000 to $6,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 135: Album of cyanotype views of the Florida panhandle and beyond, 224 photographs, 174 of them cyanotypes, Apalachicola, FL and elsewhere, circa 1895-1896. $1,200 to $1,800
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 154: Catalogue of the Library of the United States, as acquired from Thomas Jefferson, Washington, 1815. $15,000 to $25,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 173: New Englands First Fruits, featuring the first description of Harvard in print, London, 1643. $40,000 to $60,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 177: John P. Greene, Original manuscript diary of a mission to western New York with Joseph Smith, 1833. $60,000 to $90,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 243: P.E. Larson, photographer, Such is Life in the Far West: Early Morning Call in a Gambling Hall, Goldfield, NV, circa 1906. $2,500 to $3,500
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 261: Fred W. Sladen, Diaries of a WWII colonel commanding troops from Morocco to Italy to France, 1942-44. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 309: Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos, por varios autores, a Mexican plate book. Mexico, 1854-1855. $2,000 to $3,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 8: Diaries of a prospector / trapper in the remote Alaska wilderness, 5 manuscript volumes. Alaska, 1917-64. $1,500 to $2,500.
  • Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia, [col commento di Jacopo della Lana e Martino Paolo Nidobeato, curata da Martino Paolo Nidobeato e Guido da Terzago. Aggiunto Il Credo], 1478
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia [Commento di Christophorus Landinus, edita da Piero da Figino. Aggiunte le Rime diverse; Marsilius Ficinius, Ad Dantem gratulatio], 1491
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus - Opera, 1465
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - Le terze rime di Dante, 1502
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Boccaccio, Giovanni - Il Decamerone. Di messer Giouanni Boccaccio, 1516
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Giordano Bruno - Candelaio comedia del Bruno nolano achademico di nulla achademia; detto il fastidito. In tristitia hilaris: in hilaritate tristis, 1582
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Petrarca, Francesco - Le cose volgari di Messer Francesco Petrarcha, 1504
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Legatura - Manoscritto - Medici - Cosimo III de' Medici / Solari, Giuseppe - I Ritratti Medicei overo Glorie e Grandezze della sempre sereniss. Casa Medici..., 1678
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri con varie annotazioni, e copiosi Rami adornata, 1757
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lot containing 80 printed guides and publications dedicated to travel and itineraries in Italy

Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2018 Issue

The Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction in 2017

The Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction in 2017

Another year has come to a close, meaning it's time to look back at the Rare Book Hub Top 500 auction prices in the field of books and paper for the year 2017. The high end of sales was a little softer this time. Nothing matched last year's high price of $5.6 million, let alone previous years when the Bay Psalm Book and Audubon's Birds of America pushed the top price into double digit millions. This year, the best that could be mustered was $1.8 million, the lowest high in many years.   At the bottom, the slippage was more modest. Number 500 took in $71,700, a drop of 1.2% from $72,576 in...

The Year Ahead

The Year Ahead

For those involved in the world of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera 2018 will be complex.  This is nothing new but we’ll probably see continuation of the widening market split between the worl...

How can we help in 2018?

How can we help in 2018?

How can we help in 2018?   Change is now embedded in the fields of rare books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera.  Knowledge continues to increase, even explode, and as it does, the value and relati...

AbeBook Lists Their Top 10 Most Expensive Items for 2017

AbeBook Lists Their Top 10 Most Expensive Items for 2017

"I am" seem to be the magic words for the AbeBooks annual Top 10. Last year, it was "Sam I am," this year "I think, therefore I am." Who knew Dr. Seuss and Rene Descartes had so much in common? We ...

8 Topics from the world of books you might have missed in 2017

8 Topics from the world of books you might have missed in 2017

1) KINDLE TURNS 10 - SALE OF e-BOOKS PLATEAU Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader first introduced in 2007 turned ten in 2017. Though Kindle is credited with bringing portability and broad based popularity t...

Mr Cléry and “Fake-Book”, or the Last Days of Louis XVI.

Mr Cléry and “Fake-Book”, or the Last Days of Louis XVI.

There was a post on Facebook the other day about the new evil of our times, fake news. Spreading through social networks, it has become a worldwide weapon of misinformation. This reminded me of an ...

AbeBooks to Remove eBooks from Their Website

AbeBooks to Remove eBooks from Their Website

AbeBooks recently announced to their participating booksellers that they will discontinue listing eBooks on all of their websites. This will be welcome news to those who use their site to find coll...

William Dailey:  known by the friends that he kept

William Dailey: known by the friends that he kept

     It is okay, even fine, if as a life ends, few mourn.  Most people are neither well known, nor well understood.  Hell, we often don’t know ourselves very well so thinking that others understan...

Jan. 27: Fine Books & Manuscripts including an unknown Truman archive at Potter & Potter Auctions

Jan. 27: Fine Books & Manuscripts including an unknown Truman archive at Potter & Potter Auctions

This month, Potter Potter Auctions is hosting a sale of Fine Books Manuscripts comprising 563 lots. The sale boasts an impressive range of material including Presidential autographs and documents...

Jan. 27: Presidential autographs, maps, Civil War and rare books at Case Antiques

Jan. 27: Presidential autographs, maps, Civil War and rare books at Case Antiques

Letters and books from the libraries of President George Washington and his early biographer and friend, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, constitute key lots in the Winter Case Antique...

A Book Collector on the Prowl

A Book Collector on the Prowl

Recently I purchased an obscure Munsell imprint.  Such imprints were the production of Joel Munsell of Albany.  His was a modest printing establishment, initiated in 1834, that would run beyond his...

What to Do About a "Raging Bigot" of a Bookseller?

What to Do About a "Raging Bigot" of a Bookseller?

It wasn't the best of publicity for the antiquarian book trade. Actually, it wasn't particularly a book trade issue. Every type of business has its good and its bad. Still, a story about a booksell...

Who Owns the Rosetta Stone?

Who Owns the Rosetta Stone?

There are few "manuscripts" (but not works on paper) from antiquity more important than the Rosetta Stone. Discovered in Egypt in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering the meaning of E...

eCatalogues

eCatalogues

  1 The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd 30 Antiquarian Items: Canon, Civil, Common, Ecclesiastical, Rabbinical and Roman Law E-List 30 Items Catalogue Link 2 The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd ...

Twelve New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

Twelve New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

This month we take a look at 12 new catalogues in our Reviews section. Primary Sources Uncharted Americana has published their first catalogue. Their specialty is unique or rare material in the fie...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 51. Ortelius' Influential Map of the New World - Second Plate in Full Contemporary Color (1579) Est. $5,500 - $6,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 165. Reduced-Size Edition of Jefferys/Mead Map with Revolutionary War Updates (1776) Est. $4,750 - $6,000
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 688. Blaeu's Superb Carte-a-Figures Map of Africa (1634) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 105. Striking Map of French Colonial Possessions (1720) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 98. Rare First Edition of the First Published Plan of a Settlement in North America (1556) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 181. Important Map of the Georgia Colony (1748) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 547. Ortelius' Map of Russia with a Vignette of Ivan the Terrible in Full Contemporary Color (1579) Est. $1,400 - $1,700
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 85. Homann's Decorative Map of Colonial America (1720) Est. $1,600 - $1,900
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 642. Blaeu's Magnificent Carte-a-Figures Map of Asia (1634) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 748. The Martyrdom of St. John in Contemporary Hand Color with Gilt Highlights (1520) Est. $1,000 - $1,300
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 298. Scarce Early Map of Chester County (1822) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    H. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493. Est: € 25,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    P. O. Runge, Farben-Kugel, 1810. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Kandinsky, Klänge, 1913. Est: € 20,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Burley, De vita et moribus philosophorum, 1473. Est: € 4,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. B. Valentini, Viridarium reformatum seu regnum vegetabile, 1719. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    PAN, 10 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: € 15,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. de Gaddesden, Rosa anglica practica medicinae, 1492. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. Merian, Todten-Tanz, 1649. Est: € 5,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    D. Hammett, Red harvest, 1929. Est: € 11,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    Book of hours, Horae B. M. V., 1503. Est: € 9,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. Miller, Illustratio systematis sexualis Linneai, 1792. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    F. Hundertwasser, Regentag – Look at it on a rainy day, 1972. Est: € 8,000

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