Another year comes to an end, and once again it is time to look back at the highest prices paid at auction for items in the books and works on paper field. This will again be a year for record volume at auction. At the top end, we saw a record high price paid for a printed book, and a record for a manuscript letter. The former was noted for its age, the latter its content.
All of the AE Top 500 for 2013 sold at prices of $67,950 or higher. That is down slightly from last year's $71,700. Nine items exceeded $1 million in price, versus 11 last year. However, this year's record for a print...
The Marcus Book Store sits in the lower Fillmore section of San Francisco at 1712 Fillmore Street, just north of Geary Boulevard that routes traffic east west from the downtown to the affordable ne...
Clarity about the future is rooted in clarity about the past. The picture that emerges will not always be appealing and will sometimes be inconvenient, particularly in a period of regression to th...
We are now entering the start of the 2014 auction season. The season builds from now through May, when it slows for the summer. There will be many fascinating items offered, great deals for buyers,...
An updated account of the life of eccentric book thief Raymond Scott was recently published. The title is Shakespeare Love. The Inside Story of the Book Crime That Stunned the World. It is a simil...
It is in the nature of the book trade that the field is always adjusting the relationship between tradition and change. The percentages will vary through the decades, prosperity is a dampener, for...
One day, a bookseller from New York tried to convince me to buy one of his books despite some minor defects: “I’ve been in the business for more than thirty years and trust me, the beauty of a book...
New Movies Highlight Popularity of the Books
A pair of new movies now in wide theatrical release should bring new attention to books by two authors who are already extremely well known.
The...
Numbers do not always tell the whole story but when the number is the quantity of scheduled auctions in the books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera category for a specific month we can make compariso...
The confusion over which out-of-state companies must collect sales tax in which states was ratcheted up another level as a result of a recent U.S. Supreme Court non-decision. The Supreme Court decl...
On a grassy knoll in Albany, New York Joel Munsell rests as he has since 1880 when his printer’s heart ran out of ink. Mr. Munsell was a local printer who left an outsized mark that was once visib...
This is a busy time of year in the cataloguing business. Twenty new bookseller's catalogues arrived in the past month. A couple of them celebrate anniversaries. From legal specialist The Lawbook Ex...
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
