An educational and informational site about rare, old and antiquarian books.
In 1906, an American humorist by the name of Gelett Burgess authored the book “Are You a Bromide?” On the back of its dust jacket the book featured a picture of a young, fictional woman Miss Belinda Blurb, in the act of blurbing – “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’!” And so the term “blurb” was coined. […]
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As every statistician or analytics professional in today’s environment can affirm, collecting the information is crucial, but not enough, since most of data’s value lies in its use. While information is getting increasingly complex and there is certainly more of it, technology is actually helping unearth some of the insights hidden in the raw data […]
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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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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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With the starry explosion of books in electronic form on the market, many theories have been made as to what position books in their natural form will now be ranked. While there are some who argue that printed books will cease to exist in a mere matter of time, others more optimistically believe that […]
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The new Big Data technological innovation has the potential to usher in an information-based, scientific revolution in a number of industries and human endeavors. Like all scientific revolutions however, it will take some time to transition to all sectors of businesses and society, especially in cases where markets are relatively heterogeneous and imperfect, such as […]
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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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On September 1, 1939 4:45am Central European Time, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein leaves Danzig harbor to cross the channel to the Polish army fortress Westerplatte while German Wehrmacht begin crossing the border into Poland. It is the beginning of World War II. At the same time across the Atlantic in the United States, two partners […]
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At the beginning of last year in the midst of a slew of exciting exhibits and predictions made by institutions about the literary explosion that was expected to take place in China, we wrote an article titled “2012 – The Year of China.” We appropriately concluded that “only time will tell whether 2012 turns out […]
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