Antiques Trade Gazette 39
and economic theory Uncut and largely unopened in
“John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which was published in 1936, a time of great economic depression, offered a radical new analysis of economic instability and methods of controlling it”
Bank of England, this ran to just eight pages, but in later wrappers it sold at £1300. A look back to a major sale at
Sotheby’s on October 28 – the first of an ongoing series of sales that will disperse the ‘Library of an English Bibliophile’ – finds an 1817 first of David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.
original boards, now very worn at the spine and some edges, this must have been one of the more recent acquisitions of this English bibliophile, for as recently as 2008 it had sold at Christie’s for £7500 as part of the Foljambe Collection from Osberton Hall, Nottingham. At Sotheby’s it made a much higher
£13,000, but the record stays with the copy in an even better-preserved original binding, and once more entirely uncut and mostly unopened, that sold for $35,000 (then £23,800) as part of the Abel Berland library at Christie’s New York in 2001. Sold for a record £8500 in that
Sotheby’s sale of last October was an almost mint copy of what has been described as the most influential modern work on economics. John Maynard Keynes’ The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which was published in 1936, a time of great economic depression, offered a radical new analysis of
economic instability and methods of controlling it – a text that should probably still be on the compulsory reading lists of politicians and economists today. On November 30, Christie’s South
Kensington took £3500 for a copy of Keynes’ book and, on December 16, Sotheby’s sold another for £3500. Both were good-looking copies, but not quite so pristine as the record breaker. Finally, a note on the complete set of
Karl Marx’s polemic on political economy, Das Kapital, that formed part of that English Bibliophile sale at Sotheby’s. The three volumes (bound as four) of
this set were all Hamburg firsts from the years 1867-94 and the bindings were of the period, though not matching. The set sold at £25,000. Only the first volume was published
during Marx’s lifetime, the remainder of the work – the summation of 20 years research, mostly in the Reading Room of the British Museum – was seen through the press by Friedrich Engels.
Evidence of diversity in African-Americana
THE lastest African-Americana sale to be held by Swanns of New York (March 10) ran to just over 500 lots – books, manuscripts, letters, posters and objects – of which some three- quarters found buyers. Wyatt Houston Day of Swanns said this was unquestionably
the most successful sale they have held in the 16 years since they launched these specialist auctions. Unsold lots did include some major items – among them a rare copy of Frederick Douglass’ 1848 Narrative... of his own life, valued at $25,000- 35,000 – but this was certainly a sale that offered diversity. The oldest lot was recovered in 1992 from a wreck found
on the Little Bahama Banks, a well-known ships’ graveyard. An ovoid ballast stone, 9in (23cm) long and weighing 15lb, it had a mask-like image of an elephant’s head scratched onto its surface, and is thought to have been the work of a slave during the long and murderous middle passage from Africa to the West Indies. Diver Herbert Humphreys had been searching for a known
continued on page 40
Left: bearing an image of an elephant’s head, this ballast stone from a 16th century English slave ship sold for $20,000 (£12,400) at Swanns.
$140,000 for the other Archie Andrews
I HAVE always had a soft spot for what one might term qualified record breakers, so I am delighted to report that George Pantela of GPAnalysis, who tracks all sales of CGC-certified comics, has confirmed that the bid of $140,000 (£86,220) that secured the copy of Archie Comics No.1 seen above at Heritage Auctions of Dallas on March 2 “
...is the highest price ever paid for a non-superhero comic book”. The 1942 comic showed that
Archie can hold his own with, and even outsell the likes of Spider- Man, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four. It sold to a West Coast collector who has been collecting Archies for 40 years and told Heritage: “I’ve been looking for a high-grade Archie No.1 for some time [this one was CGC-certified 8.5] and this is the first I’ve come across that I’d feel good about owning. It’s not going to leave my possession until I die.” Batman and Superman may
still be way out there in the lead, but the carrot-topped Archie Andrews is on their trail. In the UK, of course, the same
name conjures up an entirely different character – an unlikely star of a hugely popular radio show of the 1950s, our Archie was a ventriloquist’s dummy! The idea may seem daft, but as
Peter Brough, Archie’s controller, was not a very good ventriloquist, radio was an ideal solution, and the shows did give opportunities to several performers who went onto bigger things – among them Max Bygraves, Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and Archie’s singing girlfriend, the very young Julie Andrews.
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