Rare Book Monthly Articles - August - 2021 Issue

The personal collection of William [Bill] S. Reese is to be sold by Christie's beginning in May, 2022

The personal collection of William [Bill] S. Reese is to be sold by Christie's beginning in May, 2022

Bill Reese, who passed away in 2018, was both a rare book dealer and a collector of Americana, other books, prints, and art.  It was a great privilege for me to be his client for a decade.  In 2002, Bill Reese became the very first member of Americana Exchange (now RareBookHub).  In 2022 his exceptional personal collection will be sold at Christie's and it will be a monumental event.   The collection, acquired over decades, will be dispersed in a matter of days and hours:  his fourteen thousand days in the field, converted into "May I have an opening bid?  On the left, yes in the back and...

Sale of Honresfield Library, Including Major Brontë Sisters Material, Put on Hold

Sale of Honresfield Library, Including Major Brontë Sisters Material, Put on Hold

What Sotheby's said would be one of the great library sales of recent years has been called off, and for the noblest of reasons. The sale was of the Honresfield Library, one of the greatest British...

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy - Running a Big Bookstore Texas Style (DFW)

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy - Running a Big Bookstore Texas Style (DFW)

It’s a fantasy we all have: Let’s open a really good old style bookstore. We’ll buy an antique building in a sleepy little town on the outskirts of some major metro area and hope that with a lot of...

Library Books Overdue for More than 70 Years Finally Returned

Library Books Overdue for More than 70 Years Finally Returned

We have a couple of stories of overdue library books this month. These are not typical overdue books, but ones dating back to the first half of the twentieth century. Such books rarely ever make a ...

Tom Goldwasser has relocated to Connecticut

Tom Goldwasser has relocated to Connecticut

Thomas A. Goldwasser Rare Books [ABAA] has recently moved offices from San Francisco to bucolic Connecticut where the firm will continue to develop its web presence, while issuing occasional virtua...

The Big Guns will be in the rooms:  At Bonhams

The Big Guns will be in the rooms: At Bonhams

Books, manuscript, maps, and ephemera take you only so far.  It’s possible to disappear into a great story but it’s close to shocking to consider you can personally acquire objects mentioned, pictu...

Mademoiselle de Bazincourt: Style Defines The Man and the Woman

Mademoiselle de Bazincourt: Style Defines The Man and the Woman

Style defines the man, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon once said—it also defines the woman, of course; but it was less frequently underlined in the 18th century. That’s probably one of the reasons ...

Where are we going from here?:  Dealers & the Online Era

Where are we going from here?: Dealers & the Online Era

Every book town has the bookstore. The singular institution run by a bookseller with decades of experience. You need to prepare yourself for such places. Fortify yourself to sustain your focus for ...

Book Censorship is Raising Its Head Again, and This is a Bad Sign

Book Censorship is Raising Its Head Again, and This is a Bad Sign

Some disturbing news has come out of Hungary recently of concern to those who support freedom of ideas in books. Hungary might not seem an important place on the world stage, but as those cognizant...

Donald Heald Auctions:  On Plan

Donald Heald Auctions: On Plan

Donald Heald, the New York rare book dealer, had been watching the emergence of auctions over the past decade as an alternative to selling at set prices and concluded the market was increasingly in...

Second Highest Price Ever Paid for a Declaration of Independence

Second Highest Price Ever Paid for a Declaration of Independence

Records were set at Freeman's auction in anticipation of July 4 when a copy of the Declaration of Independence sold for over $4 million. According to Freeman's, that was the highest aucrion price e...

Helen R. Kahn has Retired

Helen R. Kahn has Retired

A few months ago Helen R. Kahn sold her stock of rare books, maps and manuscripts to Patrick McGahern Books.  The news arrived in an email mentioning that the Kahn stock is now offered by the McGah...

Record Price for Soccer Card, Female Athlete's Collectible Card

Record Price for Soccer Card, Female Athlete's Collectible Card

Another month, another collectible card setting record prices. However, this one is nowhere even near the price of other cards we have seen. It's not the $5 million+ spent on a Babe Ruth or Mickey ...

Four New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

Four New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

This month we review four new bookseller catalogues. Forest Books has a miscellany that seems to cover every imaginable subject. Stuart Lutz Historic Documents has many manuscripts and autographs o...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
    Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
    Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
    Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
    Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
    Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
    Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
    Ketterer, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
  • Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
    Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.
    Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.
    Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.
    Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.
    Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.
    Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
  • 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

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