Kestenbaum & Company's K2 Judaica Sale: Rare Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Graphic & Ceremonial Arts on Thursday includes 226 lots. Joseph Budko's Der Babylonische Talmud in Auswahl (Berlin, 1924), this one of five copies printed on vellum in a fine binding by O. Dorfner, is estimated at $40,000–50,000. A large nineteenth-century Torah scroll in a North African square Hebrew hand, sold with another in Iraqi square Hebrew hand, could fetch $5,000–10,000. A Marc Chagall lithograph, "Moses and the Tablets of the Law" (1963), this number 29 of 40 copies, is estimated at $7,000–9,000.
And even though the 442-lot Chiswick Auctions sale From the Curious to the Extraordinary does not include much in the way of printed matter, I can never resist having a browse through these catalogues, since they always contain fascinating things. Among them in this instance are a very large taxidermied gharial (an Asian crocodilian) from around 1890 (£8,000–12,000), an opalized wood fossil previously in the collections of the Museum of Curios in Cornwall (£5,000–8,000), and what is described as an "early pair of Queen Victoria's knickers" (£5,000–7,000). There is a very rare dodo bone, from the collections of the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History (£3,000–5,000). Also from Wynd's collection comes a bezoar, 5 centimeters in diameter (£600–800).
