Friday, April 23, 2010

Auction Report: Recent Sales

Some more recent auction highlights:

- Swann Galleries sold the Penzler Collection of Espionage on 8 April. A first edition of Fleming's Casino Royale made $33,600; an inscribed copy of Moonraker sold for $50,400; and an archive of James Bond-related documents fetched $57,600.

- At Swann's 12 April sale of Early Printed Books, the top seller was Saint Thomas Aquinas' Commentum in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis (Venice: 1492), heavily annotated on the opening leaves. It made $9,600. A copy of the first John Baskerville edition of the KJV (1763) made $9,000.

- The 22 April Autographs sale at Swann saw an inscribed copy of Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned fetch $12,000; an autograph album of musicians and composers made $11,400, and a signed photo of Teddy Roosevelt was the high seller at $15,600.

- Christie's London sale of Travel, Science & Natural History on 22 April brought in a total of £790,050. The top seller was a colored copy of Emily Eden's lithographs, "Portraits of the Princes and Peoples of India" (1844), which made £55,250. The first edition of Darwin's Origin beat its estimate, making £27,500.

- Bloomsbury London had a Bibliophile sale on 15 April. Two lots were tied for the top spot, at £1,600. Bloomsbury New York sold Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts on 21 April, at which the top seller was a first edition of Yeats' first book, Mosada, formerly in the possession of a family member. It made $60,000. William Goldson's Observations on the Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (1793) sold for $36,000, and a 13th-century missal fetched $34,000.