An educational and informational site about rare, old and antiquarian books.
One of the greatest artifacts of American history, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, commonly known as the Bay Psalm Book, will be auctioned at 7pm on the 26th day of this month at Sotheby’s in New York. The 6-by-5-inch hymnal book’s estimated value was raised by 10 million dollars since the end of last year […]
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The full-page ad in the June 19, 1939 edition of the New York Times titled “The New Pocket Books that may revolutionize New York’s reading habit,” read: Today is the most important literary coming-out party in the memory of New York’s oldest book lover. Today your 25 cent piece leaps to a par with dollar […]
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Unfortunately, sometimes book collectors get a taste of what is considered a bad purchasing experience. Often times they realize that the book that raised their pulse rate did not turn out as expected. Sometimes a book bought online may just not have been adequately described or the smell from fungi present in a book turned […]
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During the last quarter, current political events had an impact on book sales of certain genre relative to a particular topic. A number of rare book journals and organizations reported that sales for George Orwell’s classic 1984, for instance, have skyrocketed in the wake of the National Security Agency scandal. 1984 makes a good summer […]
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Beyond The Golden Age of Dutch cartography which produced some of the most spectacular Dutch sea charts, or “Pascaartes,” with cartographers Johannes Blaeu and Abraham Ortelius, and Dutch atlas publishers Gerard Mercator and Hondius & Janssonius , the 16th century brought the earliest map to depict America as separate from Asia. The northeast coast of […]
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Rare Books Digest occasionally hosts opinions and views of international book trade professionals such as this week’s contributor, technology engineer, book collector, and book dealer – Jim Sekkes (www.linkedin.com/in/sekkes/). Since the invention of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century, an estimated 130 million books have been written and published. It took […]
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In June of 2011, Abebooks sold a first edition of the science fiction epic Dune, signed by the author, for $7,500. The amount matched the Chilton Book Company editor’s advance offer made to the book author, Frank Herbert, back in 1963. It proved to be a tough sell at the time, as publisher after publisher […]
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The first quarter of the year was another quarter of solid growth. As always, some of the genre and some of the authors in our Rare Books Sale Monitor (RBSM) performed better than others, but healthy fluctuations from one quarter to the next is the way sale pricing behaves. Take, for example, last quarter’s […]
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Rare books are collectibles and the month of April brings capital gain, estate or gift tax considerations to those of us residing in the United States. Whether you have decided to sell off parts of your collection or bequeath it to an heir, Uncle Sam wants to know. Failing to manage valuable asset holdings properly […]
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Photography is not merely a reflection of reality but more like a witness to realism. All the technical manipulations used by computer imagery, turn-tables, biochromatic gum exposures are hopeless without photographable reality. Photography would be guilty of imposing an image of reality if it simply passed off reflections instead of visible achievements that captured a […]
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