Rare Book Monthly Articles - January - 2025 Issue

Introducing Categories: Maps, our first!

Introducing Categories: Maps, our first!

From the beginning of the printed word, records about them have been kept. Their form soon coalesced into a common understanding that title, author, date and place published identifies most printings.  Since then, not much has changed, until now.   Until now, search logic was used to penetrate catalogues and databases with three or more of these:                   By author name             By title             By subject             And by date   And these identifiers still work fine. However, we’re in the earliest moments when collectible paper will dominate the field.  Searchi...

High Prices Highlight the 2024 Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction for Books and Related Collectibles

High Prices Highlight the 2024 Rare Book Hub Top 500 Prices Paid at Auction for Books and Related Collectibles

Another year has come to a close, which means it's time to look back at the year just past with the annual Rare Book Hub Top 500 highest prices paid at auction for books and related collectibles. I...

Trending Now - Books

Trending Now - Books

The reports of books' death have been greatly exaggerated. This is no doubt a difficult time for many booksellers, particularly smaller ones and those in the business of selling high-priced classic...

And the Word of the Year Is...

And the Word of the Year Is...

The Oxford University Press has named its Word of the Year. For not the first time, The Word of the Year is not a word, its a short phrase, a combination of two words. Those words are “brain rot.” ...

Rare Book Hub: New Services and New Rates

Our Rates for 2025-26   Rare Book Hub’s subscription prices go up on January 1st every two years. This is it.   Here is what we are providing:   Access to our Rare Book Transaction History ...

PI(E) Day Baking & Culinary Historian Contest March 14, 2025

PI(E) Day Baking & Culinary Historian Contest March 14, 2025

The team planning for Pi(e) Day 2025, invites book people everywhere to combine books and baking by joining Petite Pi(e) Day on March 14, 2025.  For the seventh year running The Great Library Pie ...

Magra, Good for Nothing...Or the Apocryphal Relation of Cook’s First Voyage

Magra, Good for Nothing...Or the Apocryphal Relation of Cook’s First Voyage

According to Captain Cook, midshipman James Magra was “good for nothing”, but Magra did at least one good thing: he published an apocryphal relation of Cook’s first voyage. Translated into French i...

January 1 is Public Domain Day

January 1 is Public Domain Day

January 1 is an important holiday. No, I'm not talking about New Year's Day. There is another holiday that happens on the same day – Public Domain Day. This the day on which works whose copyrights ...

Newly Discovered Manuscript Declaration of Independence to Be Auctioned

Newly Discovered Manuscript Declaration of Independence to Be Auctioned

For the first time ever, a manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence written in the hand of a key participant in the nation’s founding is set to appear at auction. This extraordinary docum...

Booksellers Take on Amazon with a Little Help from their Friends

Booksellers Take on Amazon with a Little Help from their Friends

There's a battle going on in France between booksellers and Amazon. An independent party, the government, may again be called on to render a verdict, though they are not nonpartisan. You know who t...

Case Auctions: A Potpourri January 25-26

Case Auctions: A Potpourri January 25-26

Case Auctions of Knoxville, Tennessee has prepared a fascinating auction catalogue in conjunction with their 2025 Winter Art Antiques Sale that occurs January 25-26. For those who have a yen to br...

Multiple Travel, Research, and Residence Grants offered by Libraries

Multiple Travel, Research, and Residence Grants offered by Libraries

Artist-in-Residence and Research Fellowship at University of Miami’s Kislak Collection (Deadline Jan. 24, 2025) The University of Miami's Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Early Americas, Exploratio...

HighBids.com: Two Chances to add to your Collections

Hi-BidsWin.com is offering Print History Tools of the Trade   As January arrives, so too two auctions at HighBidsWin.com will soon be gaveled down.   They are:   Rare Books, Catalogs, Magazi...

Shapero Rare Books' to End Listing on London Stock Exchange

Shapero Rare Books' to End Listing on London Stock Exchange

Scholium Group, the parent of Shapero Rare Books (and little other business besides Shapero Modern Prints), will be delisting its stock from the London Stock Exchange on January 6. Ten years ago, S...

The Rare Book Hub Monthly: 2024 in Review

The Rare Book Hub Monthly: 2024 in Review

Whew, what a year! While you were sweating inflation, the cost of living and the tight election we were posting monthly articles from the world of rare books including auctions, dealers, social med...

Six New Catalogues Reviewed for January

Six New Catalogues Reviewed for January

This month we review six new catalogues from six booksellers. Rulon-Miller Books features titles from various collector and bookseller collections they recently obtained. Kelmscott Bookshop focuses...

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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