Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

A quieter week coming up in the salerooms, but there are still a couple of auctions to watch:

Bonhams London will hold a Travel & Exploration sale on Wednesday, February 10. The 191 lots include a set of four oil paintings depicting key views associated with the Crimean War, based on lithographs by Thomas Packer (1855). The paintings are estimated at £40,000–60,000. A copy of the second issue of Champlain's Les Voyages de la Nouvelle France Occidentale, dicte Canada (1632), with a 1664 map inserted in place of the original, could sell for £18,000–25,000. This copy was once in the collection of François de La Poterie, librarian to Cardinal Mazarin. The diary of Christopher Palmer Rigby from 1858 to 1863, covering his term as British Consul in Zanzibar and documenting his efforts to suppress the slave trade, is estimated at £10,000–15,000. Other Rigby letters and material will also be sold. 

On Thursday, February 11, PBA Galleries will sell The Frank Graff Collection of Rare Valentines from the Victorian Age, in 128 lots. A large album containing 800+ trade cards from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rates the top estimate, at $1,500–2,000. An album of about 600 Valentine cards from the same period could sell for $1,000–1,500. There are many more albums in this vein, as well as some more intricate examples: one lot includes about forty cards with moveable or fold-out elements ($500–800); three elaborate calendar fans ($400–600), &c.

And even though there's not a lot of book-related content, I couldn't resist noting that Ripley Auctions' sale of the Niagara Falls Guinness World Record Museum Displays will end on Friday, February 12.