On Tuesday, December 22, Soler y Llach in Barcelona sells Libros Raros y Valiosos, in 173 lots. Three lots start at €25,000: the 1497 Ferrara Epistole de San Iyeronymo Vulgare; the five-volume 1506–1507 Salamanca edition of Alfonso Tostado's Sobre el Eusebio; and the 1517 Logroño chronicle Comie[n]ça la Chronica des Serenissimo Rey Don Juan el Segundo desde nombre. A second impression of Llull's Liber de Laudib. Beatissime Virginia Mariae (Paris, 1499) starts at €15,000.
I do want to look back at a few notable prices from last week's sales, though. At Sotheby's Paris, a rare first edition copy of Pascal's Lettres to A. Dettonville (Paris, 1658–1659) sold for €107,100 (doubling the presale estimate). Over at ALDE, Henri Matisse's Jazz (Paris, 1947) fetched €125,000. At the Pierre Bergé sale, a first edition of Descartes' Discours de la Méthode sold for €90,990 (triple its estimate), while a c.1497 Paris Roman de la Rose also tripled it estimate, selling for €92,254. Another overachiever in that sale was a Stendahl manuscript diary, which made €91,000.
The Bonhams sale also saw some noteworthy sale prices: the Stoneywood Bible made £200,250 (its estimate was £20,000–30,000). A series of fifteen lots associated with John Chard totaled more than £485,000, and a presentation copy of Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity sold for £81,500.
