Collectables

So well has the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association’s (PBFA) monthly online book fair been received that it is being continued as a permanent fixture.

Letter informs George Washington of his election to the presidency.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Bid to a double-estimate and record $24,000 (£18,460) at Freeman’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of Philadelphia on October 14 was a complete and well-preserved example of publisher John Bell’s great Poets of Great Britain… collection.

Bid online to a record £3200 in a Norfolk auction was one of 375 copies of a 1924 Nonesuch Press work comprising the first chapter of Genesis…, as illustrated with a dozen woodcuts by Paul Nash.

English edition of the most famous scientific book of all finally ends up in German hands.

With indoor fairs still more or less on ice for now, a new project from Shapero is offering dealers the chance to unite under one roof.

The artist, cleric, schoolmaster and author William Gilpin (1724-1804) is best known as a champion of the Romantic idea of the picturesque.

Estimated at £6000-8000, an Anglo-Saxon bronze gaming piece – a metal-detecting find for the consignor – sold for £95,000 (plus premium) at the latest auction at TimeLine in Harwich, Essex.

Unpublished work by mathematician John Wallis who was also a major influence in code breaking sells at Dominic Winter

A single leaf from a Gutenberg Bible that sold for a higher than expected $65,000 (£50,980) in a Philadelphia sale this autumn.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

MADAM – The correct term for the ‘mirror’ under discussion in Letters, ATG No 2468 is an ‘embossed glass showcard’.

Several decades on from the last of the five major auctions Sotheby’s held to disperse items from the remarkable collections of American historical documents and letters formed by Philip (1902-75) and Elsie Sang (1906-97), a further selection appeared at Sotheby’s New York (26/20/13.9%).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

David Sear, author of Roman Coins and their Values, called it “among the most exciting numismatic discoveries of the 21st century, if not of all time”.

Edinburgh auction offered 1592 book from first European press dedicated to such a typeface.