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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

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

  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 27th
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    K. Marx, Das Kapital,1867. Dedication copy. Est: € 120,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Latin and French Book of Hours, around 1380. Est: € 25,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Theodor de Bry, Indiae Orientalis, 1598-1625. Est: € 80,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 27th
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Breviary, Latin manuscript, around 1450-75. Est: € 10,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    G. B. Piranesi, Vedute di Roma, 1748-69. Est: € 60,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    K. Schmidt-Rottluff, Arbeiter, 1921. Orig. watercolour on postcard. Est: € 18,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 27th
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: € 20,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    C. J. Trew, Plantae selectae, 1750-73. Est: € 28,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    M. Beckmann, Apokalypse, 1943. Est: € 50,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 27th
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Ulrich von Richenthal, Das Concilium, 1536. Est: € 9,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    I. Kant, Critik der reinen Vernunft, 1781. Est: €12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, May 27:
    Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) / Die Volks-Illustrierte (VI), 1932-38. Est: €8,000

Article Search

Archived Articles