rare documents

Star Spangled Banner Sells for Record Auction Price at Christie's

Filed under: Auctions

The Star Spangled Banner is on display at Christie's in New York. It will be sold by the auction house on December 3.

A rare first edition of America's national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, sold at auction today at Christie's for $506,500 (including the buyer's premium), setting a record price for any sheet music sold at auction. The pre-sale estimate for the lot was $200,000 to $300,000.

Composed by poet Francis Scott Key during the evening of September 13, 1814, the sheet music was offered as part of Christie's "Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana" sale at its headquarters at Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

According to Chris Coover, senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie's in New York, the buyer is an American private collector. "It shows what an icon of American patriotism the Star Spangled Banner really is," says Coover.

The sellers are two retired Pennsylvania antique dealers who bought the sheet music as part of an album in 1989 for $50. The dealers only later realized the significance of what was contained in the album.

According to Coover, there are only eleven copies still in existence, including this one, though, until recently, it wasn't well known that this one even existed. "It is the only one still in private hands with all others owned by institutions," says Coover. "It is quite a rarity."

Gallery: Star Spangled Banner

The Star Spangled Banner on view in Christie's NYC Gallery

A Close-Up View of The Star Spangled Banner.

A Close-Up View of The Star Spangled Banner at Christie's

The first edition of The Star Spangled Banner contains the mispelling of the word

Tags: antiques, auction, Christies, Francis Scott Key, rare documents, sheet music, star spangled banner, Steve Forbes, Winston Churchill

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Rare Galileo Text Up For Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

Imagine a time when the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun was considered a dangerous notion. That was Galileo's world and this year marks 400 years since his first demonstration of the telescope. His first glimpses of the planets and other heavenly bodies changed our world forever.

PBA Galleries of San Francisco is auctioning off first edition, second issue, of the book in which the first English translation of Galileo's "famous dialogues" were published, arguing the correctness of the heliocentric theory of planetary motion, as demonstrated by his observations with the telescope. This volume is Thomas Salusbury's Mathematical Collections and Translations and contains the first versions of Galileo's theories in English. The majority of it is made up of Galileo's The Systeme of the World in Four Dialogues. Wherein the Two Grand Systemes of Ptolomy and Copernicus are Largely Discoursed of...This is the second issue, with a new title-page and contents list. When it was first issued in 1661, it was to be Volume One of a two volume work. In 1666, however, shortly after Volume Two was printed, the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the city. Nearly all copies of the second volume were lost. A small quantity of unused sheets of the first volume remained and in 1667 these were supplied with a new title-page and contents-list with reference to the material in Vol. II omitted. This second issue is very rare and estimated to sell for $30,000 to $40,000 at auction on September 17 at PBA Galleries in San Francisco.

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Tags: galilieo, rare books, rare documents, RareBooks, RareDocuments