High Bids Win: Letterpress & Bindery Auction end December 5th, and then 3 more auctions
- by Bruce E. McKinney
This sale ends 12-5-24
High Bids Win: Letterpress & Bindery Auction ends December 5th, and then 3 more auctions
For most, books start with paper and ink. But for a special few, they prefer to have the old equipment that was used to create them. Old presses occasionally come up for sale as well with all their accoutrement. We’re privileged today to talk about a firm that is handling a series of old presses, typesetting, and binding equipment auctions, 4 of them over this and next months, followed by others to be announced this next spring.
So I’m introducing High Bids Win, the Ephrata, Pennsylvania auction house who handles both books and the equipment that create them. Their December sale ends quickly – on the 5th, just in time to scratch your printer’s itch before the holidays.
When I was a kid in the 1950’s, there were two scents that fired my imagination, Evening in Paris that cost twenty-five cents, and the other was the smell of my family’s press rooms where printer’s ink was for a young man, the caviar of scents. Even to this day, my olfactory system tingles when walking by a printing plant’s open door.
There are two categories of people who may or will respond to this article. Those who have long wanted their own press(es) and, younger folks who have yet felt the emotional embrace of the humming, clicking, banging, and swish, swish, swish of their future dreams.
Either way, this December sale may be your peek-a-boo into a world has been slowly disappearing. This equipment will be studied, evaluated, and discussed and ultimately bid-on for those who decide “yeh, I’m up to this.”
The extraordinary bookman, Bill Barlow, into his 80’s would draw his hand across his printing equipment and sigh, and exhale those were the days. If your days are ahead, and are open to be a printer, click into High Bids Win:
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