PBA Galleries

A wistful and chatty letter from Charlotte Brontë to her editor William S Williams sold for $65,000 (£47,450) in California on September 7.

A wistful and chatty letter from Charlotte Brontë to her editor William S Williams comes for sale in California on September 7.

The name Steve Ditko (1927-2018) scarcely needs an introduction to comic collectors.

Maps and views of San Francisco were among the principal attractions of an April 21 sale held by local auction house PBA Galleries (25/20% buyer’s premium) to disperse the first portion of the Charles Fraccia Collection.

Published in 1862, one exceptional lot in a Californian sale that focused on food and drink was billed as “The Canonical Text in Bartending”.

The Travellers Tour through the United States of 1822 was once described as the first American board game.

At nearly 7ft high, a fine example of a four-sheet coloured lithograph of the Sutro Baths sold for $10,000 (£7355).

A 50th anniversary edition of the much-loved AA Milne and EH Shepard books, a boxed set published in the appropriate years of 1974-78, is shown below.

First edition of Napoleon Hill’s 'Think and Grow Rich' sells at auction

Top lot in a golfing sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) was a 1927 first of Down the Fairway: The Golf Life and Play of Robert T Jones, Jr.

Plenty of Dickensian lots were on offer in a sale held by US saleroom PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium).

One of the specialist golfing sales held by PBA Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) of San Francisco included the work of a Scottish-born designer of golf courses who is said to have laid out some 400 of them.

Sold for a record $2750 (£2220) at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) in California on October 10 was an inscribed copy of The World Set Free, a prophetic novel by HG Wells.

Golf books do not bring as many really high prices as was once the case, but the most recent of the regular sales in this category held by a Californian saleroom did contain a couple of surprises.

With the title and 26 plates tipped onto brown paper leaves, a large ‘library edition’ copy of William Nicholson’s famous Alphabet, published by Heinemann in 1898, is estimated at $800-1200 in a November 7 sale at PBA Galleries of San Francisco.

Published in 1931, Pearl S Buck’s 'The Good Earth' was the best-selling novel in the US for both that and the following year, as well as the winner of a Pulitzer Prize.

A Colin Dexter first brought one of the higher bids at Keys (20% buyer’s premium) of Aylsham in its June 13-14 sale.

Early magazine runs brought some unexpectedly high prices in the latest of the regular golfing literature sales held by a Californian saleroom.

Old cookery books are more than simply receptacles of food history. They speak of technological change, the availability and discovery of ingredients that came with the expansion of the known world and how the social standing of the cook or chef changed over time. They are also very much in collecting vogue.

A Californian sale of March 7 certainly offered great variety in age, content and price range. Promoted as A Biblio-Medley for All Tastes, it ran to well over 500 lots across its printed and supplementary, online catalogues – with at least one lot, a volume of the works of Arthur Hallam, sold for just $10.