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Bits and pieces

26 Jul 2006

First to note two interesting editions for sale: Suisse 6 (1864), with the attractive coloured cantonal arms; and Lower Egypt 2 (1885), which is in itself not that rare, but it apparently comes complete with the 1892 supplement for the Museum at Gizeh - which does make it quite rare.

Also an observation that there seems (unfortunately, in my view) to be an increasing tendency for sellers in online auctions to list their Baedekers not in standard auction, but with a fixed price ("BuyItNow" or similar). This makes the process rather less exciting, I think. Our current method of recording new auctions makes it diffcult to distinguish between standard auctions and the fixed-price non-auctions, so both kinds may appear in the listing of current auctions. However, only prices resulting from a proper auction get recorded in the database, so the averages and ranges you can see on each edition page genuinely reflect the operation of a free market!

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