Rare Book Monthly

Articles - January - 2022 Issue

Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Wishing you the best!!!

Wishing you the best!!!

For Rare Book Hub, 2021 was a complex year by every measure.  The volume of auctions and number of lots posted substantially increased.  As well, the percentage of lots sold rose as the median dollar value also took a jump.  Net-net, collectible paper was a very strong category as consignors lined up, auction houses adjusted, and bidders and buyers stepped in.

 

As to the first major report encapsulating the full year, this month’s lead story, the annual top 500 lots, tells us who the big winners were.

 

In February Mike Stillman will provide detailed analysis for the full year.  From what I can tell, 2021 may well appear to have been a once-in-a-century experience.  But given the positive trends the field has been experiencing over the past five years there’s no conclusive reason to suggest collectible paper will slow down any time soon.

 

To all who have shared the experience we offer congratulations and our thanks.

 

Bruce McKinney

Managing Partner

Rare Book Hub


Posted On: 2022-01-31 02:07
User Name: bukowski

The RBG auction strikes me as odd. Commonplace books asking way too much. I deeply admire RBG, but methinks a relative is trying way too hard to make a buck.


Posted On: 2022-01-31 02:29
User Name: bukowski

I didn’t know the auction had ended when I posted my first comment. Weirdly high prices, almost as if the buyers were trying to boost RBG’s and their own liberal-democratic credentials by putting a price on her. I’m a lib-dem myself, but this auction smacks of a set-up. Reprints of obscure law articles going for hundreds of dollars? Dry legal tomes selling for thousands? Is RBG’s signature that valuable? I collect association copies of books myself, but come on, something’s fishy here.


Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th May 2026
    Forum, May 28: Book of Hours.- Heures de nostre dame a l'usaige de Romme, Paris, Antoine Chappiel pour Germain Hardouin, [1504]. £6,000-8,000
    Forum, May 28: Colonna (Francesco). La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, second edition, Venice, Sons of Aldus Manutius, 1545. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, May 28: The Christ Child holding a crystal orb and surrounded by banderoles with devotional exhortations, on a leaf most probably from a Book of Hours, [Southern Netherlands, last decades of the fifteenth century]. £2,000-3,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th May 2026
    Forum, May 28: Jackson (Shirley). The Haunting of Hill House, first English edition, signed presentation inscription from the author to Claude Fredericks, 1960. £2,000-3,000
    Forum, May 28: Lennon (John). In His Own Write, first edition, first impression, signed by the author, 1964. £3,000-4,000
    Forum, May 28: Doves Press.- Keats (John). [Poems], one of 200 copies on paper, Doves Press, 1914. £5,000-7,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th May 2026
    Forum, May 28: Rodrigues (João Barbosa). Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensium, 2 vol., first and only edition, Brussels, 1903. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, May 28: Newton (Sir Isaac). Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica…editio ultima, auctior et emendatior, Amsterdam, Sumptibus Societatis, 1714. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, May 28: Kepler (Johannes). Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, wuibus astronomiae pars optica traditur, first edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1604. £5,000-7,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th May 2026
    Forum, May 28: Tagliacozzi (Gaspare). De Curtorum Chirurgia per insitionem, libri duo, first edition, Venice, Gasparo Bindoni, 1597. £7,000-10,000
    Forum, May 28: Lootsman (Jacobsz). The Lightning Colomne, or Sea-Mirrour, containing the Sea-Coasts of the Northern, Eastern and Western Navigation..., 1670. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, May 28: Ribelles y Helip (José), Attributed to. An album comprising 33 finely executed watercolours of Spanish costume, bull-fighting scenes, and other genre subjects, [circa 1830]. £10,000-15,000

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