Dallas, TX — An extremely rare letter written and signed by composer Ludwig van Beethoven sold for $275,000 to lead Heritage Auctions' Historical Manuscripts Auction to $1,762,995.50 in total sales Nov. 12.

The Ludwig Autograph Letter Signed "Beethoven" roared past its pre-auction estimate of $60,000+ to reach its

And I thought last week was busy! It's a veritable deluge of sales this week:

On Wednesday and Thursday, 11–12 November, Dominic Winter Auctioneers will sell 600 lots of Printed Books, Maps & Autographs,

Dallas, TX – A note written in 1636 by the man who solved the riddle of human circulation and reproduction while serving as personal physician to King Charles I. A missive from 1880 by “the father of microbiology” to a colleague about cholera and “the hot virulence caused by the flight of pigeons.” A letter from the doctor who pioneered modern abdominal surgery. And a dispatch from the

Dallas, TX – Heritage Auctions’ Rare Books event, held Oct. 15-16, was an absolute success thanks to one of the most spectacular works of the 16th century and some of the most significant authors of the 20th century. And a few mystery guests even made some noteworthy appearances during the sale.

Over the course of four thrilling sessions spread over two days, almost 1,300 bidders spent

Dallas – It looks, at first glance, like a colossal ransom note or madman’s manifesto – all-caps ballpoint-scribble filling 562 pages of hole-punched loose-leaf. Whole sentences crossed out; notations in red bleeding across the scrawl. A mess, yes. But also a masterpiece.

Contained in this heap of seemingly harried handwriting is novelist James Ellroy’s fourth and final installment in

Dallas, TX – Charles Schulz’s Peanuts made its comic-strip debut on Oct. 2, 1950. Seventy years and one day later, that Boy Named Charlie Brown topped Heritage Auctions’ European Comic Art event when an original Easter-themed Sunday strip from April 1968 sold over the weekend for

Dallas TX – A suite of 26 serigraphs on paper depicting each letter in the English language by Russian-born French artist Erté is among the top draws in Heritage Auctions’ Erté Art & Design Online Auction Oct. 23.

The auction will be Heritage Auctions’ second online auction dedicated to the art and design of Erté,

Dallas, TX – “The most spectacular contribution of the book-maker's art to sixteenth-century science was without doubt the Astronomicum Caesareum of Petrus Apianus.”

This is how Owen Gingerich begins his 1971

Dallas, TX – A copy of the Declaration of Independence that was published by The Democratic Press publisher John Binns and a daguerreotype of one of the partners whose discovery of gold helped spark the California Gold Rush sold for $30,000 to lead Heritage Auctions’ Americana & Political Auction to $1,182,076 Sept. 14-

Dallas, TX – Raising nearly $100,000 to help comic-book creators was the very best way to spend Batman Day.

Saturday afternoon, Heritage Auctions sold 110 original Batman No. 75 covers illustrated by some of the industry’s best and best-known names, among them DC Comics Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee, Eisner Award-winner Arthur Adams and The Dark Knight Returns’ creator Frank