Two prayer books, two auctions, same result

January 30, 2014
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Yesterday, the Christie’s auction house sold The Rothchild Prayerbook, a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript for $13,605,000 with the buyer’s premium. The auction held at the Rockefeller Plaza in New York had  an estimated sale value of $12,000,000-$18,000,000. The book, a masterpiece of Renaissance art, contains lavish  and extensive miniature illustrations of unsurpassed beauty in […]

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Commuter Libraries and their Effect on Scarcity

January 24, 2014
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The short-lived publishing house of William Godwin formally started operations in 1930 in New York. Talk about bad timing; the depression that began around September 4, 1929 had caused the famous Black Tuesday market crash of October 29, 1929, setting a bleak backdrop for the publishing house’s humble beginnings. For a small publisher looking to […]

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Rare Book Sale Monitor update – 4th Quarter 2013

January 10, 2014
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In last quarter’s Rare Book Sale Monitor (RBSM) update we outlined how the RBSM handles the ranking of a book’s condition. In this update we will go over some of the workings of the RBSM engine in ranking special features of an antiquarian volume. More specifically, we will cover modeling aspects used to identify data […]

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Robert Crumb – book Vs underground comic

January 3, 2014
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The first book illustrated by Robert Crumb does not rank as high by his large group of followers, as some of his underground comic magazines.  However, the controversial, American cartoonist and musician released his first book as well as the first issue of his first comic book around the same time. The year was 1967 […]

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Happy New Rare Book Year – 2014

December 27, 2013
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How often do you discover a book of interest in a bricks and mortar bookstore and, instead of buying it on the spot, you complete the purchase of that same book online? According to a recent survey by the Codex Group, approximately a quarter of all books purchased online fall into that category. Bookshops have […]

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Tasha Tudor Christmas gift at a bargain

December 20, 2013
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Throughout her extraordinary career as an author and illustrator of some of the most delightful children’s stories, Tasha Tudor was careful to incorporate all that is lovely into each of her enthralling works. This task meant, of course, that Christmas and cats could not be exempt from her wonderful works in children’s literature. This most necessary […]

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The Charles Dickens Christmas Stories

December 13, 2013
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What would the Christmas season be without A Christmas Carol? A Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol, that is. The beloved story which was adopted into film a few times and is frequently staged during the holiday season in a theatrical production near you captures the essence of the Christmas spirit. The book itself is the world’s […]

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Paul Éluard’s poetry that inspired surrealism

December 6, 2013
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Before surrealism was officially founded in 1924 when André Breton wrote Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, a group of young writers that included Paul Éluard, André Breton, Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault, were active in the Dadaist movement.  It was during this time that French poet Paul Éluard, in collaboration with German Dadaist Max Ernst, produced […]

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Speculations on the sale of the Bay Psalm Book

November 22, 2013
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 …And the world’s most expensive book sale in the history of book trades goes to the Bay Psalm Book owned by the Old South Church. It sold for 33 million US dollars to the auction’s high bidder: the new owner of the rare first book to be printed in America, billionaire collector of biblical books, […]

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Tweet, tweet, blurb, blurb

November 8, 2013
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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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