Rare Book Hub for 21 years been pursuing two goals, one of them to become the first click world-wide when the interested, enthralled, committed or required want to understand the importance, value and rarity of rare paper. With 14,128,422 records we have captured the essence of the auction flow from the past 175 years, simply by following price changes.
Of course price at auction has always reflected the complex interaction of the copy, its quality, its rarity and its audience. The fact that those auction transactions would be recorded and remembered was never expected, beyond the many small and truncated efforts to provide ballpark perspectives. Because many institutions, individuals and dealers in the field had records incremental to this project, they gave or sold them to us. The outcome is clarity, if you have the eyes to see it.
Sabin’s Bibliotheca Americana set the modern stage in the late 1860’s to provide a systematic approach to bibliographical information for the burgeoning field of Americana. For that category of practitioners, it saved time and saved money by avoiding errors.
Along the way there were both large and small projects to provide deeper, updated information. If your interest was poetry or fiction you’ve had the opportunity to buy updated volumes.
As to determining value, auctions have long been the best single source to confirm cash prices.
For us twenty-one years ago, our goal became to capture both the present and past records. Today our fourteen million records represent a giant step up from Sabin’s first step.
That done, we’ve taken another significant step, to make the 31,388 auction events that comprise Transactions+, to be easily accessible as ad hoc databases on demand. Welcome to the New World!
Why would you want to know? Collectible paper has a life of its own. Every auction has a context. If you are up to knowing, as of today, you can.
Auction Reports are a small link to the left of our Keyword Search. It’s a small link, but it’s a giant step.
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
