- Results for the 2 June Bibliophile Sale at Bloomsbury London are here. The top lot was a collection of chromolithograph horse illustrations, which made £2,700.
- PBA Galleries sold Charles Bukowski & His Circle: The Collection of Ross Runfola, also on 2 June. Results are here. The highest price realized was $10,200 for an original Bukowski watercolor.
- The top seller at Swann's 2 June Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Ephemera sale was a 1777 map of Connecticut, which had a $3,000-4,000 estimate but sold for a whopping $168,000. A manuscript map of Japan's Suruga province fetched $120,000.
- The much-anticipated Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts at Christie's London on 8 June must have been a bit disappointing. Only 39 of 81 lots sold, for a total of £1,781,100. The Pillone Library did not sell as a group, and apparently only one of the volumes sold separately: a 1478 edition of Dioscorides, which made £91,250. The unexpected high spot was a spectacular copy of Maria Sibylla Merian's first work, Blumenbuch (1675-1680). Estimated at £60,000-90,000, it ended up selling for £565,250.
- Of the 399 lots at the 13 June Christie's London sale of Printed Books and Manuscripts, 213 lots sold for a total of £492,275. The top lot was a third issue of Galileo's Il saggiatore nel quale con bilancia esquisita e giusta si ponderano le cose contenute nella libra astronomica e filosofica di Lotario Sarsi Sigensano (1623), which made £16,250.
- Some fairly healthy prices at the 14 June Bloomsbury London sale Books from the stock of the late John Sperr of Fisher and Sperr London, in 169 lots. As expected the top lot was William Curtis' The Botanical Magazine, which sold for £26,000. The complete set of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751-1780) sold for £8,500.
- Results for the PBA Galleries Fine Literature, Illustrated & Children's Books, and Fine Books in All Fields sale on 16 June are here.
- Sotheby's New York's 17 June Fine Books and Manuscripts sale the total take was $3,288,444. While a few of the expected top lots didn't sell, the Marc Chagall sketchbook made $602,500, and the René Magritte archive fetched $458,500. The flag from the C.S.S. Alabama sold for $218,500. A first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales did much better than anticipated, making $206,500.
Preview of the remaining June sales:
- Christie's New York has Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts on 23 June, in 325 lots. A signed first edition of Joyce's Ulysses, from the collection of John W. Boylan is estimated at $350,000-450,000, while a collection of Franklin's Paris and Passy bagatelles could sell for $250,000-350,000. An early manuscript copy of Mateo Ricci's world map is estimated at $150,000-250,000. Lots of Bob Dylan manuscripts and many other interesting lots here.
