Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2004 Issue
December Auctions <br>Lost in the Moment
Christies R & R sale on 12/17. Lot 362: George Harrison's guitar.
Over the next year the complete collection of material should be displayed at appropriate venues: book fairs and book clubs. A small "Memoir" of 75 to 125 pages should be prepared and printed in a tasteful quantity of 250 copies. All copies should be well bound and 40 more printed on better paper and completed in outstanding bindings. The final ten will each be bound by a different binder in a manner of their choosing but "meeting the highest standards of the trade." There is one more copy. It is yours. It has your personal notes inscribed in the margin.
Now, like a fine but still fresh wine, you must wait. For a French Bordeaux it could 4 or 5 years. For this piece de grande epoche it will be at least ten. The individual copies of your book will slowly come to auction rooms and the market will assign a value. In perhaps twenty-five years your personal trove will come to the market. "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we offer…." You'll be dead, and out of the country so to speak, but your grandchildren will be saying you weren't so dumb after all.
All right, I'll admit to getting carried away but isn't this what the book business and book collecting are all about? Excess. To outsiders book collecting is excess. To those on the inside it is reality finally taking hold.
Now what? The holidays are approaching. There is still time to find interesting material. Let's check the yellow pages. AA Books, Aardvark Books, Abacus Books, Where do I start?
There is an alternative of course. View all lots on line at AE and leave absentee bids. Your spouse won't even know you are surreptitiously in London. And remember what comes after December: January and a new group of auctions.
Link to the AE Auction Calendar.
