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Stats at 11,000

24 Jun 2007

There are now 11,015 successful auctions in the database, resulting from 20,238 auctions started, so the success ratio (i.e., auctions resulting in a sale) is yet again down slightly, to 54.2% from 54.6% last time. The number of successful auctions per month continues its slightly increasing trend at 315 (from 313 last time).

Of the 1030 different editions and variants listed separately at BDKR.com, 907 have now occurred in at least one successful sale (after 10,000 sales, 899). Of those, 111 have appeared once only. As regular visitors know, three of the editions listed were never issued (D99, D134 and D185), so there are now only 120 editions without a recorded sale.

Generalgouvernement is, as ever, the most sold edition (by an increasing margin), with 90 sales (last time 82). In other words, about eight in every thousand Baedekers sold is a Generalgouvernement - it was particularly amusing to see one advertised with the word "selten" (rare, or actually seldom, as in seldom seen)) in its title this morning... The three graces: Italy from the Alps to Naples 2 (1909), Great Britain 7 (1910) and Belgium and Holland 15 (1910) now each have 73 sales, with Belgium and Holland 14 (1905) coming up strongly on 72. The best-selling French edition is as before Sud-Est de la France 9 (1910), now in 36th position (down from 25th), and still on 40 sales. Of the 11,015 books, 4784 were in German, 4576 in English and only 1655 in French. I wonder if this reflects the relative sizes of the editions, or just a greater interest in collecting the German and English editions?

The total sale price for the 11,015 books was €409,823.10, giving an average price of €37.21, down from €37.68 last time. If all the books had gone for their BDKR guideline price, the total sales would have been €919,400, so the ratio is continuing down to 44.6% from the previous 45.2%, since we haven't had a Bassenge sale recently!

The average number of bids per sold book remains at 5.5, which, like all the other figures here, is interesting but not worth taking very seriously!

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