August 19, 2020
I made a follow up Youtube video with another 5 books at modest prices for the beginning antiquarian book collector. There is the one of the first restaurant guides, a prison memoir, a Gilded age calling card etc. All proceeds benefit the ABAA’s Benevolent Booksellers’s fund to assist booksellers in times of need. There is also a plug for the upcoming VIRTUAL Brooklyn Antiquarian Book Fair
posted in: buying rare books, rare books NYC, sell rare books, selling rare books, You Tube Rare Books Video
August 26, 2017
I am often asked “What is this antique book worth?” The adage that “something is worth what someone will pay” is not a satisfactory or helpful answer. In the antiquarian book world, when giving a professional opinion of value, it is often helpful to consult actual action records in the databases for comparable copies that have sold, as well as other retail copies on the market (primarily through collectible and out of print book search engines like Abebooks.com). It is also particularly important to assess the actual copy of the work at hand to look for any distinguishing characteristics that can increase the value such as provenance, binding, condition etc.
Here is a copy of a work I was recently asked to evaluate. The book is an 1810 copy of Henry Fuseli’s Lectures of Paintings. Fuseli’s style had a considerable influence on many younger British artists, most importantly William Blake.
When examining the auction records, one can easily find that a copy sold at Bloomsbury Auctions in London 2013 for 69 GBP. Certainly that can be used as a benchmark evaluation for the book since that is an actual sales price. Perhaps if this copy went into auction, it would receive only scant attention from buyers and a cursory examination, and achieve a similar price.
Nevertheless, the book appears increasingly scarce in commerce. There are no copies at present listed on the major book search engines for purchase at the touch of a button. This gives one, as they say in retail, some pricing power (at least some limited pricing power as it assumes demand).
What is lovely about this book is that there is an engraved vignette at end (“Ancora imparo: Mr Angelo Bonarroti”) by Blake. This engraving directly links two of the world’s greatest artists: Blake and Michelangelo. In a Blake Dictionary, S. Foster Damon writes that “Michelangelo was to Blake’s painting what Milton was to Blake’s poetry.” To a buyer that may be unfamiliar with Fuseli’s book, the possibility to own an original Blake engraving at modest cost – and one that depicts his own interpretation of the image of Michelangelo- certainly raises interest in the book.
Additionally, this copy features a rather fascinating “CLD” in gilt on the black morocco spine (in attractive contract with the earthy pebbled marbled papers). The CLD ares the initials of Caroline Lucy Scott, Lady Scott (1784–1857), the Scottish novelist. A known 18th century woman writer’s provenance is quite interesting, and I don’t recall seeing a similar placement of initials or a monogram on the side of a spine of a book, perhaps a parallel to the way a monogram might be placed on the clasp of a diary. It makes a delightful example of a bookbinding and personal ownership and that certainly raises the value in my eyes.
It would therefore not be inappropriate, given its scarcity in commerce and the attractiveness of this particular example, to put a price of $450 on it. Whether someone will pay that is, as always, another story.
posted in: RARE BOOK APPRAISAL, Rare Book Auction Value, Rare book auctions, sell rare books, selling rare books, We buy Rare Books
February 18, 2017
I have had numerous enquiries over the years to evaluate and appraise old manuscripts. Certainly, I come across my fair share of antiphonals, graduals and choir books that once graced innumerable churches in Spain, Italy and Europe. Given their large size, the incredibly resilient vellum upon which they were written, and perhaps the respect (not always) accorded to obviously religious books, a lot have survived.
The value of such a manuscript is quite complicated and here I cannot of course go into all the particulars regarding the age, style of decoration, illuminations etc. that factor into their value. As an illustration, below is a recent one that passed through my hands- a rather elegant late 15th to 16th century Spanish antiphonal. It was almost complete with a large number pages (234 in total), albeit at some point, as is often the case, the finest pages were likely removed as specimens of the illuminated art. Still, many very attractive pen-work initials survived in Mudejar style that reflect the artwork of the individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista.
One thing that I do not do is appraise these manuscripts as the value of an average individual page multiplied by the number of pages. These are what I consider “book breaker” calculations and it is not something that I even consider. Many beautiful books have been broken over the years for their plates as well as fine atlases dismembered for their individual framable maps. Thankfully, given the economics of the trade, this has become less of an issue as complete preserved copies are often worth more as a whole than the some of their parts. However, I do find the practice continues with antiphonal and liturgical manuscripts and the economics of selling individual pages at modest prices still favors tearing such books apart.
I will write here a bit of bibliophilic heresy (I know brace yourself!) because while I do not condone the practice of breaking these manuscripts or evaluate them on that basis, I do not condemn it either. Many of these manuscripts are incomplete, and single examples (given the large surviving numbers) generally do not have singular importance in terms of what they add to our cultural or historical understanding of the period. Also, in times past, dealers like Otto Ege, who made a controversial practice of dismantling medieval manuscripts and selling the pages individually, also served the interest of scholarship in having some examples (even fragments) dispersed to many universities and a wider audience of students. Therefore, I cannot say today, given the seemingly widespread lack of interest in objects of culture in general, that something is not gained by having individual vellum leaves from such manuscripts grace ordinary living room walls.
posted in: Handwritten Document Value, NYC Rare Book Dealer, NYC Rare Books, Old Manuscript Value, RARE BOOK APPRAISAL, Rare Book Auction Value, Rare book auctions, sell rare books, selling rare books, We Buy Manuscripts, We buy old books, We buy Rare Books
December 27, 2016
Lord Chesterfield’s Letters were not originally intended for publication. Four hundred letters survived his son’s early death in 1768, and thankfully for literature and posterity, were published in 1768 by the son’s widow. The work became famous as a complete education manual of the 18th century, albeit the great Samuel Jonson did deride it for teaching the “”the morals of a whore”
The edition pictured here – the first American- was published in 1789 in Philadelphia. It appears to be a great rarity with only three known copies listed Worldcat and one at the American Antiquarian Society. There are also no records in ABPC or Rare Book Hub or copies at auction in many decades.
It got me to ponder what was the first American published manual of education. That honor probably goes to the New England Primer, a textbook used by students in New England and in other English settlements in North America that was first printed in Boston in 1690. With that said, the famous Primer was religious in nature and followed a tradition of combining the study of the alphabet with Bible reading.
The present volume as an educational work is entirely different and is rightfully a guide to conduct and values in every practical sense. Take the chapter on “Prejudice” which contains valid advice for even our internet age of highly partisan and fake news: “Never adopt the notions of any books you may read, or of any company you may keep, without examining whether they are just or not, or you will otherwise be liable to be hurried away by prejudices, instead of being guided by reason; and quietly cherish error instead of seeking the truth.”
I try to make it a habit of valuing books on this blog and this book presents a particular challenge. It is certainly a pleasing copy in many respects, retaining the original binding with charmingly scratched initials of its early owner. It also has some early handwritten provenance on its paste-downs. Most unfortunately it is missing one leaf, ripped from the text block in the chapter on Lying. Sadly, Chesterfield issues no admonishment or warning of the derived opprobrium for tearing out a page from a book!
posted in: NYC Rare Book Dealer, NYC Rare Books, RARE BOOK APPRAISAL, sell rare books, selling rare books
October 1, 2016
Since we are large buyers of old paper, ephemera and manuscripts, we always caution sellers not to throw ANYTHING out. It is incredible the number of times I am called to an estate or library to appraise or evaluate books, and after an hour of finding little of interest or value on the shelves, I discover in a drawer, attic, or overlooked closet, papers that contain something remarkable or valuable.
Ephemera is loosely defined as “items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.” It includes a large variety of old paper, scrapbooks, trade-cards, broadsides, newspapers, and pretty much anything printed. Sometimes these fragile – ephemeral- pieces of paper survive in very few if any copies and they are often cultural windows into the period in which they were printed. In today’s market such ephemera has become very fashionable to collect – largely for its rarity. Everyone wants something interesting and fresh that does not pop up with regularity in commerce or at auction.
About 15 years ago, as an example, I found a thin tissue paper laid in the pages of an old Irish book. The paper contained the lyrics of the “Defence of Fort M’Henry”, the now famous “Star Spangled Banner,” written in 1814, by the young lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships. It turned out to be an unrecorded and contemporary broadside of the poem and of considerable scholarly and monetary value.
As another example, sitting on the pile of old papers in the photo below is an interesting 1807 broadside that was printed in New Hampshire. Simply signed by the anonymous ‘Americanus’, it concerns raising taxes to pay for the cost of the Louisiana purchase- a subject which appeals to scholars interested in the history of economics as well (no doubt) to real estate brokers impressed with (if not envious of) the greatest real estate deal in history. As a rare broadside, it is worth up to $750 to the right buyer.
So, don’t throw any old paper out! Sift through those trunks! Empty those drawers and shoeboxes. There are lots of undiscovered treasures out there- it’s not just junk in a trunk.
[BROADSIDE] [AMERICANA] [DIRECT TAX] Author: Americanus [United States] : [publisher not identified], [New Hampshire, c. 1807] Moderately foxed, margins slightly chipped & frayed, several insignificant separations along folds. Uncut. VERY RARE. Top with “In such a country, so happily circumstanced,” [etc.—quotation from Washington’s Farewell Address]. 1 p. 45.2 x 28 cm. “Concerns the cost of the Louisiana purchase, with a table showing the proportionate cost per county of the $15 million bill, and describing how the Embargo Act makes it difficult if not impossible to pay France without a special tax. The writer, ”Americanus,” also warns of the threat of European war.” Ref: Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC04073
posted in: ephemera, Handwritten Document Value, old paper, sell rare books, Uncategorized
