Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2023 Issue

The Annual Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices at Auction for Books and Works on Paper

The Annual Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices at Auction for Books and Works on Paper

With the close of another year, it is time to look back at the Rare Book Hub Top 500 prices paid at auction in 2022 for books and other collectible works on paper. The numbers were similar to those of 2021, which blew away every prior year, meaning 2022 was another good year. A record 24 items sold for over $1 million, one more than 2021, but the price of the 500th most expensive item slipped a bit to $113,400 versus $119,700 in 2021. To put that in context, that was the first year #500 was over $90,000, so 2022 was a big year.   The most popular categories of paper outside of books and m...

The Wild West Lives on at One of a Kind Auctions

The Wild West Lives on at One of a Kind Auctions

You can read about history and sometimes you can be part of it!  One of a Kind Auctions is offering 250 lots that not only reflects but also influenced history.  Take a meander!   Bidding is open...

Books Have Their Place

Books have long provided relief from life’s turmoils and disappointments.  Every experience and feeling has been explained, attenuated, and cast through prisms of author perspective.  We find ourse...

Downsizing: Are We Defined By What We Throw Away?

Downsizing: Are We Defined By What We Throw Away?

Doubtless you’ve noticed the rise of “decluttering” as a worthy goal; the minimalist life with few possessions is the obsession of the moment. Go for the “experience” and rid yourself of “the stuff...

12,608,421

12,608,421

We begin 2023 with 12,608,421 full text records in our principal database, Transactions+, that cover rare books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera at auction.  Those who specialize in the field have l...

Rare Book Hub:  New Services and New Pricing

Rare Book Hub: New Services and New Pricing

Rare Book Hub, née Americana Exchange has been a two decade project organized around the idea to building a bridge to the new collector.  In the 1990’s my collecting ambitions were being limited by...

Sieur de La Borde: A Contemptuous Ethnologist

Sieur de La Borde: A Contemptuous Ethnologist

In 1674, the French Protestant printer Justel published a crucial book about the West-Indies that compiled several relations yet to be published or translated into French. La Borde’s description of...

After Fifty Years in the Book Trade, a Swan Song (of Sorts, or Lots)

After Fifty Years in the Book Trade, a Swan Song (of Sorts, or Lots)

My introduction to rare books and manuscripts happened in 1964, when I was living in Palo Alto and working at Lanyon Gallery, on the periphery of the Stanford campus. A few blocks down from where w...

Lurking Deep Under the Print of an Ancient Manuscript Lies an Even Older, Missing Astronomical Masterpiece

Lurking Deep Under the Print of an Ancient Manuscript Lies an Even Older, Missing Astronomical Masterpiece

You never know what you may find if you examine an old book very closely...v e r y closely. An amazing discovery of ancient Greek astronomical readings, a star chart, has been found beneath the wri...

Iconic Surfing Book Leads Case’s Jan. 28-29 Auction

Iconic Surfing Book Leads Case’s Jan. 28-29 Auction

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—The first known book to focus solely on surfing, made by hand with original silver gelatin prints from long lost negatives, leads a stellar lineup of rare books, documents and maps...

What Do Libraries Do with All Those Books?

What Do Libraries Do with All Those Books?

A Story from Student Life, a student newspaper at Washington University in St. Louis, indirectly highlights an issue libraries are facing more and more, particularly university libraries. It's not ...

What are old books telling us about the future?

What are old books telling us about the future?

Not so much.  Transactions+ is the history of printed paper at auction and it’s tough for new terms to break in.  Covid is still very new and there are only 336 appearances of the estimated 2 billi...

Two Incunable Books, Stolen in Switzerland Years Ago and Sold in America, Returned

Two Incunable Books, Stolen in Switzerland Years Ago and Sold in America, Returned

Two incunable books, stolen from the Capuchin Library in Freiburg, Switzerland, have been found and returned to the Freiburg Canton Library which now holds the collection. The Capuchins turned thei...

46 Walker Evans Images Revisited

46 Walker Evans Images Revisited

Recently I received a very crisp catalogue about Walker Evans and 46 photographs he took and printed in Cuba in 1933.  This catalogue was issued by Michael Brown Rare Books and De Wolfe Wood.  It ...

Censorship Marches On

Censorship Marches On

The forces of darkness that have invaded libraries of late continue to push forward. There have been book bannings and library defunding. The newest tool now is library privatization. From Texas, c...

Shapero Rare Books Sees 16% Increase in Sales, 33% Increase in Profits

Shapero Rare Books Sees 16% Increase in Sales, 33% Increase in Profits

Scholium Group, parent of Shapero Rare Books, has reported their preliminary results for the first half of their fiscal year, April 1 – September 30, 2022. The numbers are good. Sales, profits, and...

What Do You Do After Being Caught Stealing Over 100,000 Books? Steal Some More!

What Do You Do After Being Caught Stealing Over 100,000 Books? Steal Some More!

If you somehow manage to steal over 100,000 books before getting caught, what is it you are good at? Presumably, that is the question Xiao Wenjia of Taiwan contemplated after being let out of priso...

Swann Galleries:  A View From the Podium

Swann Galleries: A View From the Podium

As another unprecedented year draws to a close, I find myself looking backward with nostalgia, and forward in anticipation. 2022 was many things for us here at Swann. Contrary to expectations we ha...

Six New Catalogues Reviewed

Six New Catalogues Reviewed

This month we review six new catalogues from booksellers. Langdon Manor Books offers a catalogue of African Americana. Antiquariat Kainbacher focuses on travel and expeditions. Shapero Rare Books o...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Koller, Mar. 26: Wit, Frederick de. Atlas. Amsterdam, de Wit, [1680]. CHF 20,000 to 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: Merian, Maria Sibylla. Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung, und sonderbare Blumennahrung. Nürnberg, 1679; Frankfurt a. M. und Leipzig, 1683. CHF 20,000 to 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON. Faust. Ein Fragment. Von Goethe. Ächte Ausgabe. Leipzig, G. J. Göschen, 1790. CHF 7,000 to 10,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: Hieronymus. [Das hochwirdig leben der außerwoelten freünde gotes der heiligen altuaeter]. Augsburg, Johann Schönsperger d. Ä., 9. Juni 1497. CHF 40,000 to 60,000.
    Koller, Mar. 26: BIBLIA GERMANICA - Neunte deutsche Bibel. Nürnberg, A. Koberger, 17. Feb. 1483. CHF 40,000 to 60,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: HORAE B.M.V. - Stundenbuch. Lateinische Handschrift auf Pergament, Kalendarium französisch. Nordfrankreich (Rouen?). CHF 25,000 to 40,000
  • 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
  • Swann
    Printed & Manuscript African Americana
    March 20, 2025
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 7: Thomas Fisher, The Negro's Memorial or Abolitionist's Catechism, London, 1825. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 78: Victor H. Green, The Negro Travelers' Green Book, New York, 1958. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 99: Rosa Parks, Hand-written recollection of her first meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., autograph manuscript, Detroit, c. 1990s. $30,000 to $40,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 154: Frederick Douglass, Autograph statement on voting rights, signed manuscript, 1866. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 164: W.E.B. Du Bois, What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas, Washington, circa 1936. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann
    Printed & Manuscript African Americana
    March 20, 2025
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 263: Susan Paul, Memoir of James Jackson, Boston, 1835. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 267: Langston Hughes, Gypsy Ballads, signed translation of García Lorca's poetry, Madrid, 1937. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 274: Malcolm X, Collection from Alex Haley's estate, 38 items, 1963-1971. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 367: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, Auburn, NY, 1853. $2,500 to $3,500.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 402: Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, Xenia, OH, 1892. $2,000 to $3,000.

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