$5,616,000. The Birds of America; from Original Drawings By John
James Audubon London: Published by the author, 1827-1838 Christie's, December
15 Estimate: $5 to $7 million
Even if you’ve never raised a paddle at a live auction or laid down
a six-figure bankroll to buy a book, there’s still a lot to learn
from high-end book auctions. That’s why every year
Fine Books & Collections tracks
down the top auction lots of interest to book collectors. After months of
research, our editors and writers have uncovered 237 $100,000 wonders—rare
books, maps, and autographs hammered down anywhere in the world for more
than $100,000. The complete list is online at
www.finebooks50.com.
On the following pages, you’ll find the stories behind the top auction
sales in our annual Fine Books 50 special report.
The top-fifty list proves that age does not equate
to value. Two items, John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to “All
You Need Is Love” (#9) and Marlon Brando’s Godfather script
(#45), are less than forty years old. Of course, ancient rarities also fetched
high prices, with eleven lots over 500 years old. The oldest item, a manuscript
of an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) translation of Boethius’s Consolation
of Philosophy (#8), was written about 1000 a.d.
The Fine Books 50 also shows that size doesn’t
matter. Several high-fliers are quite large. John James Audubon’s TheBirds
of America (#1) is legendarily massive. The great collector J. K. Lilly
put off buying a copy (in the days when they could be had at regular intervals)
because it was too big. Bookseller David Randall acquired a copy in a custom-built
mahogany case and offered it to Lilly. The collector explained why he had
never bought one. “The main reason is that I have no place to put
it, except under a billiard table,” he told Randall. “It may
not go through the door to the library, but if it does, I’ll take
it.” A few days later Lilly cabled, “Send Audubon. Have quarter-inch
clearance.” By contrast, the Lennon lyrics and the first map to use
the word “America” (#11) are single sheets that would fit neatly
in a file folder, and the first appearance of Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address outside of a newspaper (#46) is a small pamphlet of just sixteen
pages.
The other lesson to be learned from this report
is that uniqueness matters. More than twenty lots in the Fine Books 50 are
one-of-a-kind items or are the only privately owned copies. While most collectors
will never own a book that will fetch six figures at auction, everyone can
search out first editions with unique inscriptions or find a letter or piece
of manuscript from a favorite author. Regardless of monetary value, you’ll
always have bragging rights because no one else will have anything quite
like it.
P. Scott Brown