Like the example in the Streeter library, which 10 years ago sold for $130,000 (then just £65,000) at Christie’s New York, this example in a restored contemporary vellum binding contained an extra series of plates from the original Dutch edition of 1595-96. It sold at €60,000 (£51,725).
The original Dutch edition of this work is more valuable at auction, being the one which first revealed to nations so much about voyaging to the Americas and the East Indies, information that the Spanish and Portuguese had until then closely guarded.
On June 15, at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), an example in a recased and restored 17th century binding, and fully coloured in a near contemporary hand, sold at a record $200,000 (£157,480).
This was a copy that in 1998 had made $90,000 at Sotheby’s New York and in 2009, in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale in New York of books from Bruce McKinney’s ‘De Orbe Novo’ collection, reached $120,000.
