Book collectors, members of the trade and history buffs vied today for first editions, signed manuscripts and letters, collectibles and ephemera related to important figures in world history at Bonhams New York. The Winter Books & Manuscripts auction by the international fine arts auctioneers brought more than $850,000 and included a scarce copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Interest was strong for a broadside on vellum, a rare copy of the 1818 Tyler printing of the Declaration of Independence, which sold for $60,000. This example is the first decorative print of that important document and the first to include facsimile signatures of the “Founding Fathers.” Very few copies on vellum of the Tyler printing are known to have survived, this example sold for six times its pre-sale estimate.

Bidders had an interest in other historical papers today as well, one buyer paying nine times the estimate for a John Hancock document. Important Hancock material is always of interest to collectors, but this singular page was signed by Hancock as President of the Continental Congress, on the 11th of July in 1776. The page was in only fair condition, displaying losses and holes. According to Christina Geiger, Bonhams New York Books Specialist, “collectors have a particular interest in signed pieces from July of 1776, the dating of this document made its condition less important, as evidenced by the highly competitive bidding to obtain it.”

A discharge letter hand-written and twice-signed by John Hancock was estimated at $3,000 to $5,000, but sold after competitive bidding for $30,000 while a one-page Continental Navy appointment naming Dudley Saltonstall as Captain of the ship Trumbull, signed by Hancock, brought $10,800. A rare James Garfield document brought $13,200 (est. $6/8,000). Garfield signatures as President are rare as he was assassinated early in his administration; this one page Presidential document was signed a mere six weeks before his death.

An eloquent Andrew Jackson document brought $9,600 - the hand-written and signed letter was dated March of 1832 and related to the cancellation of Jackson’s purchase of four slaves as a gift for his adopted son.

An interesting 166-page document in German written by Dr. Wernher von Braun as his doctoral dissertation in 1934 brought heated bidding. The dissertation was classified as “Top Secret” by the German government and immediately after college von Braun was recruited as technical director of Germany’s V-2 rocket program. After the German surrender to American forces, von Braun began designing rockets for the United States and served as the first director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, AL. These papers sold above estimate, bringing $33,000.

Within the sale’s section devoted to literature, fine press and early printed materials, a seven-volume octavo edition of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America flew at $42,000 while a collector paid $33,000 for a copy of John Fisk Allen’s 1854 16-page work Victoria Regia, considered the first book to be printed in the US using color lithography, its subject matter focused on water lilies imported from the Amazon and cultivated in Salem, MA in the mid-19th century. A copy of an 1812 printing of an atlas by Alexandre von Humboldt brought $24,000, four times its estimate. The work comprises 32 copper-engraved maps, charts and profiles, for its time one of the best representations of Texas and parts of Western North America known.

A pair of portrait paintings by Eugene Paul Ullman depicting the poet Ezra Pound and Margaret Cravens (considered by many to have been his paramour) were offered together with a first edition of Pound’s Exultations signed and inscribed to Cravens. The lot brought $15,600 (est. $6/9,000). A bidder paid $13,200 for a fine copy of the five-volume 1903 Doves Press English Bible (est. $5/7,000) and a rare inscribed and signed first edition of volume one of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf sold for $18,000 (est. $8/12,000). Four typed pages from the screenplay adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead with her hand-written annotations in the margins sold for $6,000.

Bidding in today’s auction came from Bonhams’ clients seated in the Madison Ave. salesroom of the world’s third-largest fine arts auctioneers, as well as from collectors and curators from across the globe.

Posted: 12|6|07 at 5:23 pm. Filed under: Press Release.