With another year under our belts, it's time to look back at the Top 500 prices paid at auction in the books and paper field (see end of this article for an explanation). At the top end, 2018 was a very good year. Prices rebounded sharply from 2017's softness. The top price paid in 2017 was $1.8 million for an early printing of the Declaration of Independence. This year's highest price was over five times that amount. Six items sold for more in 2018 than did anything in 2017. Nine items exceeded $1 million in price, compared to five the previous year.
Perhaps more telling is the price p...
Presentation of historical data for the rare book field has been evolving for more years than any book collector can remember because it’s been clear and necessary for more than two hundred years t...
Looking back at almost 40 years as an independent bookseller I’ve been thinking about what has changed. It isn’t the money; though I do know a few dealers who’ve built a profitable business, for mo...
It’s no accident that rare books, and books generally peaked in the 19th century. Their popularity and importance stemmed from their often unique ability to deliver “content” in a world in which c...
Kevin Mark Ronald Schuwer finds himself in a lot of trouble today. Schuwer, a former student at Brigham Young University, has plied the lucrative trade of selling artifacts related to the Church of...
Although sub-titled “a follow-up to Anson’s voyage”, and sometimes bound with the latter, Voyage A la Mer du Sud1 (Duplain Brothers—Lyon, 1756) is actually an independent publication, the spin-off ...
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law" is one of those old idioms that may need updating, at least in the books and manuscripts field. In recent years, it has been more common to look at old transf...
We enter 2019 with 8,765,292 full text records in the Rare Book Transaction History Database. During the past year we’ve added 465,101 new records or 1,274 a day or 53 records every hour of every ...
Martayan Lan, the New York City rare book and map dealer and ABAA member, has announced the opening of an exhibition of New York maps issued over the past four hundred years. The event now underwa...
Milan-based auction house Il Ponte Casa d’Astewill be hosting a sale of Books and Manuscriptsthis month on January 22. Headlining the 216-lot event is a previously unknown Portolan chart, supported...
While the rare book world has been going online and bookshops closing, book fairs remain a resilient marketplace that continues to find new energy among dealers and collectors who are trying to buy...
The Scholium Group, corporate parent of Shapero Rare Books, released its interim financial report for the six months ending September 30, 2018. While holding several divisions, Shapero Rare Books i...
As the printed catalogue has declined many smart sellers have shifted to eCatalogues to showcase material. This holiday season we are pleased to present the most recent fifty eCatalogue presentati...
The American Institute of Physics has been awarded a grant of $646,697 from the Sloan Foundation to digitize and make universally available the Wenner collection of 3,800 volumes, dating back nearl...
Variety is the word for this month's new catalogue reviews. There is a variety of topics covered in subject specific catalogues, while others are filled with a variety of material themselves. Those...
