It is time once again to look back at the Americana Exchange's annual listing of the Top 500 sales at auction in the books, works on paper, and related ephemera field for 2012. It was an unusually active year, but likely the new norm. The volume of sales at auction has been building steadily and there is no reason to believe the trend won't continue. For 2012, there were again 11 items in the million dollar category, but #1 was almost $10 million, nearly four times the highest priced item of 2011.
Perhaps most telling was #500. In 2011, that item sold for $52,170. In 2012, #500 sold for...
The Arader auction of maps, rare books and natural history engravings, watercolors and color plate books at Guernsey’s on December 5th has come and gone and the sale, much discussed ahead, is now t...
Note: records and links mentioned in this article are listed at the end of page 4] Boston today is a field of skyscrapers interspersed with patches of history that live on as old buildings and pa...
Amazing finds can still be made at yard sales and flea markets. Professional sellers with a trained eye tend to scour these venues more today than used to be the case, and the amateur may have a mo...
Tyson Rare Books of East Providence, these last forty-two years owned by Mariette P. Bedard, has closed their retail shop at 178 Taunton Avenue. Tyson’s has been Rhode Island’s oldest bookshop but...
The colors are warm, the building old but recently renovated. It’s a bookstore but not what you think of when you think of bookstores you’ve seen. This is the new old, where specialist used and r...
The old school antiquarian book trade is alive and well and living in Xenia, Ohio. Meet Elizabeth Svendsen, 43, who entered the trade less than ten years ago as an online seller in 2004. She did we...
The AED, the Americana Exchange Database of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera offered at auction, described by leading dealers, explained in important bibliographies or included in collector ca...
Peculiar might be the most relevant adjective to qualify the items of the sale that took place in Drouot on December the 19th. Set up by the prestigious auction house Pierre Bergé Associés and ent...
One more publisher accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of artificially fixing the price of eBooks has bowed out of the suit with a settlement. Penguin Group has joined Hachette, HarperCollins...
Many of us lament the effect of electronic communications on the permanency of written and printed records. A paper book, a manuscript letter, provides a permanent record if kept, something scholar...
We start 2013 with a Jack Benny – 39 sales on the schedule. For January 2012 we covered 36. We expect to add others as the month progresses.
Tuesday Jan. 1st Bruun Rasmussen. Modern Prints [130...
ViaLibri, the “metasearch” engine for books, recently announced the addition of a German version of their website. Launched half a dozen years ago, the German version joins the original English and...
Eleven new bookseller catalogues are reviewed this month. Americana is the focus of the William Reese Company, M S Rare Books, and David Lesser Antiquarian Books. Walkabout Books, on the other han...
![<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.](https://pjupgrade-qadev.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/acf970a0-a15d-4c79-aa24-5e8e414cb465.png "<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.")
