Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2023 Issue

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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 ...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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 ...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read 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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

Rare Book Monthly

  • Fonsie Mealy’s
    Summer Rare Book
    & Collectors’ Sale
    July 30-31, 2024
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: U.S. / European Shipping Archive 1800-1814. The Widow Bermingham & Sons Collection. €7,000 to €10,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Bunreacht na hÉireann. Constitution of Ireland. An important copy of the First Printing of De Valera’s new Constitution, approved in 1938. Signed by the Constitution Cabinet. €7,000 to €9,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: A Rare Complete Run of the Cuala Press Broadsides. €7,000 to €9,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s
    Summer Rare Book
    & Collectors’ Sale
    July 30-31, 2024
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Grose (Francis). The Antiquities of Ireland, 2vols. folio London (for S. Hooper) 1791. Magnificent Hand-Coloured Copy - Only 25 Copies. €3,000 to €5,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Cantillon (Richard). Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General, Traduit de l'Anglois, Sm. 8vo London (Fletcher Gyles) 1756. €3,000 to €4,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Gregory, (Lady Augusta). Spreading the News: The Rising of the Moon: The Poorhouse (with Douglas Hyde). Being Vol. IX of the Abbey Theatre Series. €3,000 to €4,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s
    Summer Rare Book
    & Collectors’ Sale
    July 30-31, 2024
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Lavery (Lady Hazel). A moving series of three A.L.S. and a Telegram to Gen. Eoin O'Duffy, July-August 1927, expressing her grief at the death of Kevin O'Higgins. €3,000 to €4,000.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Dampier (Wm.) Nouveau Voyage Autour du Monde, ou l'on descrit en particulier l'Isthme de l'Amerique…, 2 vols. in one, Amsterdam, 1698. €800 to €1,200.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Howell (James). Instructions for Forreine Travel Shewing by what Cours, and in what Compasse of Time…, London, 1642. €800 to €1,200.
    Fonsie Mealy’s
    Summer Rare Book
    & Collectors’ Sale
    July 30-31, 2024
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: Rowling (J.K.) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 8vo, L. (Bloomsbury) 1999, First Edn., First Printing of Deluxe Collectors Edn. Signed. €800 to €1,200.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: James (Wm.) A Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of The Late War Between Great Britain and The United States of America. 2 vols. Lond. 1818. €650 to €900.
    Fonsie Mealy’s, July 30-31: The Laws of the United States, Published by Authority, 3 vols. Philadelphia (Richard Folwell) 1796. €600 to €800.

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions