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The Auction Home Page Essays Memoirs Fiction Plays Poetry References
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THE AUCTION Ray
Cooper Auctions
are tonics for the soul of a collector. They are business for a dealer but an
exciting part of the business. It is a chance to see the great books and match
your skill against others in your field of interest. Your priorities and the
size of your purse are unknown to the other bidders, so you hope to snatch a
treasure that others might not have recognized or understood. It
had been a long time since I attended a super book auction. While I lived in the
Washington and Baltimore area it was easy to attend the two local book auctions
and not too difficult to drive up to Pottstown, Pennsylvania for the occasional
Kane book sale. Kane had a book barn out in the country near the "Main
Line" in eastern Pennsylvania where old books were plentiful. He turned up
some surprisingly good books for his auctions, and dealers came from as far away
as New York to buy. The
Waverly Auction in Bethesda was started by Dale Sorenson and his wife to auction
both books and art. Their sales were interesting, and I managed to buy some good
books from them, but the best material continued to go to New York. There was
also a small book auction company in Baltimore that held five or six sales each
year. Chris Brady who founded the Baltimore Book Company auctions initiated
several new innovations. Each year he devoted a sale to old and rare photographs
and another to Civil War books. There were occasionally good medical books in
his auction because of Johns Hopkins and other nearby medical facilities, but
early books in the physical sciences rarely turned up. For
the really good science books I still had to go to the New York auction houses.
The Swann Auction was an old established company that dealt only in books. It
held a weekly auction during the season and had one or two sales each year that
were primarily science and medicine. While Waverly and the Baltimore Book
Company carried books in the $50 to $500 range, Swann pushed the level up to
$500 to $5000. Sotheby's and Christie's would not stoop so low, and their lots
generally started at $1000 and the estimates went up into the millions. All
auctions are fun, but they are also scary. The problem is always the limited
budget and the need to keep tight control so that you don't let yourself get
entangled in a bidding war with a collector who has more money than sense. I
have to resell the books, so if all of my limited capital gets tied up in
mistakes that sit on the shelves for years, Key Books will rapidly come to
grief. I
became quite comfortable in the Swann auctions and managed to buy some good
books from them. Their auction room was quite plain with bookcases along one
wall and folding chairs for the bidders. George Lowrey who ran the place didn't
require paddles and numbers. He knew most of the bidders, and if he didn't, he
would just ask for the name of the winner and invariably remember it after that.
He learned to recognize me even though I rarely attended more than one auction a
year. The
buyer in an auction is driven by the same forces that drive the stock market,
greed and fear. Lust for the item being auctioned and fear that someone with
deeper pockets will be after the same thing. The stock market is, after all, an
auction of stocks. But why does a collector want books that he can't read or
that can be had in later editions for much less money? People have been worrying
about this question for hundreds of years. The consensus seems to be that the
first expression of an idea in print is closer to the author's thoughts than
later printings. The first edition is also riskier for the author and usually
printed in smaller quantities than later editions. Any indication of an
association with the author or other important persons will also make the book
more valuable. In
a book auction there are two factors above all that determine the value of the
book, rarity and importance. Either of these alone will not make a book
valuable. There are many rare and perhaps even unique books that no one cares
about, and similarly there are many important books that are available in
millions of copies that have little value to collectors. Just as in the stock
market, the value of a book is what a willing buyer will pay to a seller. Just
as in the antiques business, the great treasures are generally known and widely
hunted. Heskith
Norman was a psychiatrist in California, a state where such services were in
great demand, and was clearly very successful. He began by collecting books by
Freud and others in his area of expertise and then broadened the collection into
other parts of medicine. He bought primarily from dealers, so once they learned
his interests and that he had money to pay, they went all over the world to find
the best books. His purchase of a unique copy of Vessalius’ De
Humani Corporis Fabrica that was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
was the catalyst that turned him from an occasional book buyer to a serious
collector of high spots in science and medicine. He became an astute enough
collector to concentrate on only the most important books in the best condition
available and preferably associated with the author by bearing his inscription
and signature. Ownership
of great books is a serious responsibility. It takes knowledge, effort, and
above all large amounts of money. For a collector, buying through dealers has
the advantage of the dealer's knowledge of both the importance of the book and
the price at which it can be found. Buying at auction is much trickier. In the
first place the collector must have the time to attend both the preview to look
at the books and then sit through the auction until his books come up. Although
it is usually possible to bid by telephone, the only way to look at the books is
to go to the auction site. This takes travel money and time. In addition, a
collector will often pay more for a book at an auction than he would have paid a
dealer if he had known that the dealer had the book in stock. Dealers will
generally know what other dealers have in stock, but often collectors do not
have the time to follow the market closely. THE
AUCTION CATALOGUE Among
the greatest joys of collecting is reading the catalog before a sale. A good
catalog sells books, so just as I try to make my catalogs interesting and
informative, a good auction catalog will give a complete description of the book
and include information about the author and the importance of the book to the
field. An auction catalog of a major collection is an important reference not
just for the sale but for the future. A catalog of an important auction at
Sotheby's or Christie's will include pictures of the books that are estimated to
go at the highest prices. The
Christie sale of the Heskith Norman collection of science and medicine books was
divided into three parts. I missed Part I which was held in March and included
the oldest books, generally those from the 16th and 17th centuries. The high
point of Part I was the copy of Vessalius' De
Humani Corporis Fabrica that had hand colored engravings and was bound in
purple silk velvet. It was believed to have been a presentation copy to the Holy
Roman emperor Charles V. It sold for about $1.6 million. There were also other
major items in the sale including a book that I own, Fontana's Obelisks of the
Vatican that sold for $30,000. Unfortunately, my copy is worth a lot less
because it has two of the 38 plates in facsimile. The 234 lots in the Part I
sale brought in a total of $6,483,467. I’m not sorry that I missed it, because
I couldn’t have afforded the books anyway. Each
of the three parts of the sale was described in a large bound catalog filled
with colored photographs and descriptions of the books. The catalogs themselves
were works of art and expensive. The catalog of Part II was listed by Christie's
at $70.00, but since I wanted all three catalogs for the Norman sale, I took a
yearly subscription for their book sales at $180.00.
The
Part II catalog is a quarto of 475 pages printed in England and bound in boards
with a colored illustration of the title page of Newton's Principia
on the front cover. There is a colored illustration on almost every page, which
must have made this limited edition very costly. I'm sure that Christie's didn't
lose money on it though, since they usually make the consignor pay for the
illustrations. There
are several pages of boilerplate in the front of the catalog giving the history
of the company and information for buyers and sellers. Christie's history is
impressive, having been founded in 1766 and having held many important sales of
art, antiques, books, jewels, and wine since then. Sotheby's was, until
recently, the most important book auctioneer in their London salesroom, but
Christie's Park Avenue premises have, in the last year or two, taken the lead
with some impressive sales. They sold Armand Hammer's Leonardo Codex for more
than $30 million and Volume I of the Gutenberg Bible sold for the highest price
ever paid for a printed book, $5,390,000. (This title was recently lost to
Christie’s London sales room where a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales went
for more than six million dollars.) Part
II of the Norman sale covers the Age of Reason from the 17th century to the
beginning of the 19th century. The estimates for the books range from $700/800
to more than $100,000. Little did I realize when planning for my bids that the
estimates would be blown wide open with many lots selling for more than ten
times the estimates. Christie's
has several code symbols in their catalogs to indicate their degree of ownership
of the items being auctioned. In the Norman sale there was a half moon symbol in
front of each lot indicating that Christies has guaranteed the consignor a
certain amount for that book and thus there is a reserve below which the lot
will not be sold. The opening bid is usually the reserve, and it is often about
75% of the low estimate. Therefore, it requires that amount to get into the
bidding. If no one will pay the opening bid, the lot is passed and removed from
the sale. Of
the more than 600 lots in this part of the Norman sale, there are only about 13
or 14 that I have a serious interest in and that seemed to be within my budget.
Most of these are within the $1000 to $2000 range, so it was necessary to come
up with some priorities and a strategy to try to get the best items with the
small amount of money that I had available. PREVIEWING
THE BOOKS It
is a joy to look at the books before the auction and dream that they might be
yours. The best way to learn about the books is to open them, feel them, study
the title page, and look at the plates. You are presumably previewing to make
sure that the book is as described in the catalog, but actually Christie's
rarely makes mistakes in these matters. Your real reason is that this may be
your only chance in a lifetime to handle these rarities. Christie's
has two rooms flanking their catalog desk on the second floor that are used for
previewing the auctions. The one being used for the Norman collection was lined
on three sides by heavy, deep wooden cases with doors top and bottom and on the
fourth side by cases with sliding glass doors with locks for showing the most
expensive books. In the middle of the room were tables covered with green cloth
where a few people could sit and peruse the books with some comfort. The room
could hold about 15 people without overcrowding, but there were sometimes twice
that many trying to work their way around the shelves. When
I first arrived there were only about a dozen people in the room with 3 or 4
Christie's employees to help. The glass cases were unlocked, because the crowd
was small enough to watch. As the crowd grew larger though, the cases were
locked in fear that some of the small items, more valuable than gold, might be
slipped into a pocket and disappear. A Christie's employee would open the case
for you and hand you the book but would always be aware of where the book went. In
this auction the glass cases were filled with small, innocent looking but
extremely rare items. Some of them were quite shabby out of their specially made
book boxes. Probably the rarest was a small pamphlet of 36 leaves covered in
old, limp vellum with a hand written title on the front cover. William Harvey's
classic, De Motu Cordis, has been
called the cornerstone of modern physiology and medicine and is known to be
exceedingly rare. The copy of Newton's Principia is well bound in full leather,
but four of the five volumes of Laplace's fundamental work on celestial
mechanics are bound in the original orange paper covers that are torn and worn
on all edges. Since the original state in which a book was published is
important to collectors, the worn paper only enhances the beauty and value of
the books. THE BATTLE IS JOINED
Next
door to the Pennsylvania Hotel, where I was staying, there is a little Dunkin
Doughnuts stand that is very convenient for a quick breakfast. One last review
of the catalog while eating a couple of doughnuts and drinking a large coffee,
and I was ready to face the auction. I
had decided to get to the auction early, because I wasn't quite sure of the
check in procedure. When I got to Christie's, I got in line with several other
dealers in front of a booth where people were signing for bidder numbers and
paddles. I was surprised to find that they had me in their computer so that
signing in was very easy. They of course don't want to discourage you from
bidding and spending money, so they keep good track of their customers. I
was issued paddle number 904. When I settled down in the back of the room, I
found myself sitting next to an English dealer with paddle 409. I hope that this
doesn't confuse the auctioneer. Since
I was fairly early, I took a seat in the next to last row on the left side. The
last row had hand lettered reserved signs on the chairs placed there by one of
the women in the English contingent. Everyone tries to sit in the back row in
order to see who is bidding against them. I'm not sure that this does any good,
but just as in a classroom, the back rows are prime property. After the back row
and my row were partly filled, people started moving chairs from the rows ahead
and making a new back row. This continued until the auction started when there
were five or six rows behind me and only a scattering of chairs filled ahead of
my row. I was worried for a while that I might end up in the front row. People
wandered in and out during the day and a half of the auction, but I estimate
that there were only 40 to 50 active bidders altogether. On
both the right and left along the walls in front there were a row of telephones
manned by young Christie's employees. On the right front there was an electronic
board that listed the lot number and the running bid in dollars and the major
foreign currencies as the bids were made. This seemed to be operated by one of
the senior people in the telephone row. It was all a very efficient operation
with the telephone operators primed to call people as the lots they were
interested in came up. I
knew a number of the dealers in the audience from past dealings, and others I
knew from their catalogs or their reputation. Steve Lowentheil (who was to pay
the highest price for an item in this auction) I knew from Baltimore, and John
Hellebrand from Philadelphia was one of the first science dealers that I met
many years ago. Some of the big names in the science book world, Bruce Ramer,
Jeff Weber, Jonathan Hill, and some of the London dealers I had seen in action
before. The
auctioneer got things started right on time by reading the rules covering
bidding and ownership. He then called the first lot, and the bids began setting
new records as they would continue to do throughout the auction. I had thought
that the estimates were high, but by the time the auction was over, many of the
winning bids would beat the high estimate by a factor of ten or more. Even
though the first few books sold above their high estimates, I was hoping against
hope that I might have a chance with a few of the books that I wanted. The first
lot in which I had a serious interest was a small group of astronomy books
estimated at $1500 - $2500. If I could get them for $2000, I would have a fair
chance of reselling them for more. Unhappily, the bidders were only getting
warmed up when they got to $2000, and someone finally bought the lot for $3200
plus the 15% buyer’s commission. One
lot that I thought that I would have a good chance with was a group of four
papers removed from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of the 1780’s.
They needed to be rebound in some way and were only estimated at six to eight
hundred dollars. Three of these were important papers by Henry Cavendish on the
air and the density of the earth, and the fourth was Benjamin Thomson, Count
Rumford’s most important work. This paper on the boring of cannons destroyed
the caloric theory of heat and led to our present understanding of the
connection between heat and friction. The estimate for this unimpressive looking
lot was $600-$800. I thought that these papers despite their simple unbound
condition would go higher than the Christie estimate, so I wrote in my catalogue
“to $1200”. The
auctioneer opened the biding at $500 and it rose quickly to $1000 with the mail
bids carried on the auctioneers books. When the bids reached the floor, I held
up my hand as did several others. The bids quickly surpassed my limit, so I had
to bow out of the bidding. Someone in the back of the room finally bought the
lot for $2000 plus the $300 house commission. Although these are historically
important papers, a dealer will have to resell them for more than $1000 apiece
to get his money from them. Quaritch or Maggs Brothers in London may be able to
charge such prices, but my book company would probably not be able to. The
bidders in an auction have many tricks to try to get any slight edge over their
competitors. The first of these, which has been mentioned before, is to get as
far back in the room as possible so that you can determine who is bidding. Since
the dealers know who has the deepest pockets and who is likely to be bidding for
some rich collector, they don’t want to get into a bidding war that might end
up biting them. Knowing
that other dealers are trying to figure out their bidding strategy, bidding
signals to the auctioneer are often minimal and sometimes even secret. Languidly
raising a pen or a finger is common to show that there is no great interest, but
that you are bidding to be sporting. Sometimes the prearranged finger to the
brow or ear or the right hand grasping the lapel are still used, but these
signals have lost favor because in the heat of battle, they are liable to be
missed. The auctioneer would prefer to see a raised paddle, but he has
accommodated himself to the bidder’s wishes. There
is another trick which was used several times in this auction but had only
limited success. That is to jump the bid higher to scare off the competition.
The auctioneers have set bidding increments which they follow and don’t like
to be forced to vary. For example, the bids go up by $100 between one and two
thousand dollars, by $200 between two and three thousand, and by $1000 when the
bids get to ten to twenty thousand dollars. If a bidder wants to be thought to
have a high or even an unlimited bid, he will sometimes jump one or two steps
higher in the bidding to break the rhythm and intimidate his opponents. Another
ploy that is often used when the auctioneer is having trouble coaxing one bid
higher from the audience, is to raise the bid only a half increment. Sometimes
the auctioneer will go along and accept this, but often the half increment is
refused. I
didn’t do well in the morning, but at least, I still had my money. Another
dealer and I walked around the corner in the rain and had a quick but expensive,
in Florida terms, lunch. There was a new auctioneer for the afternoon, a
vigorous, clear spoken lady who clearly ran a tight ship. She reminded us of the
rules of the game and opened the afternoon session in the F’s with a Ben
Franklin lot. My
strategy for the afternoon was to concentrate my efforts on only 3 or 4 items,
and let the rest go by. I had learned to be skeptical of the estimates provided
by Christies, but I still had hopes that some of the items estimated at
reasonable prices could be bought. One Halley item signed by Nevil Maskelyne
(Astronomer Royal, 1765) was estimated at only $1000 to $1500. Without the
signature it might have been possible to buy it in that range, but when the
auctioneer’s hammer fell it was bought for $11,000. The
audience was clearly ready for the high point of the auction, William Harvey’s
Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis. This
book that first describe the circulation of the entire blood system is one of
the most important cornerstones in medicine and biology and is known to be
extremely rare. This copy of just 36 somewhat browned leaves in a worn, limp
vellum cover was estimated by Christies at $120,000 to $180,000. The
bidding started at the low estimate and quickly escalated to more than $300,000.
Several telephone bidders were actively driving the price higher while the
bidders in the room were waiting for the bidding to slow to make their moves. As
the bids approached $400,000 several of the dealers in the room began to bid and
most of the telephone bidders dropped out. The last hectic minutes were hard to
follow, but when the auctioneer finally banged the stone to close the bidding,
my friend from Baltimore had bought the book for $480,000 plus 15%. A half
million dollars seems like a lot for a printed book, but if you are a collector
and know that another copy may never again come on the market, buying it may be
the right thing to do. The
rest of the auction was anti-climax. I was able to buy only one book, a
Lavoisier of 1787 that laid out a chemical nomenclature that has remained in
standard use since that time. I fought hard for several others, but in every
case lost out to dealers with deeper pockets. I wasn’t too disappointed. The
books were wonderful, but the auction fever was rampant. I’m sure that there
were dealers who later wondered why they paid so much. I
later spoke with Jeremy Norman, the son of the collector of the books, who is
himself a rare book dealer in San Francisco. He told me that he was surprised at
the high prices that the books attained. He admitted that his book company would
never have been able to sell the books for what Christies got for them. The
third of the three Heskith Norman sales was held four months later. I didn’t
attend although there were many books that I wanted. I wasn’t confident enough
of my ability to compete or of my desire for the books. After the sale I found
that my absentee bids had fallen far short of the prices the books attained, and
I had to console myself with the knowledge that I still had my money and there
would be other auctions. The fever that comes in an auction and the siren song
of the rare books will be back, and perhaps next time ----.
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