What's new?

An auction in Leiden

20 Apr 2017

The excellent auctioneers and antiquarians Burgersdijk & Niermans in Leiden are holding an auction with several interesting Baedekers, see here. Have a browse!

St Petersburg (1901)

13 Apr 2017

And now there is a St. Petersburg 1 (1901) available via eBay - seems to be in reasonable condition, except for the main map, which has clearly seen better days. Also, there's no reserve price...

Madeira (1939)

15 Mar 2017

There's another Madeira (1939) on eBay right now - it's been a while since the last one! Go have a look.

Happy New 2017!

2 Jan 2017

A very Happy New Year to all readers and visitors. I am sorry that the postings here are so rare, but there is so much non-Baedeker stuff to be getting on with...

At least I do try to keep the auction records up, and I hope they are of some assistance to you. Perhaps I will get round to updating the website properly one of these days. There is a lot of useful material here and it could be organised much better - and on a more modern-looking site.

Here's to a better, more prosperous, and generally updated New Year!

31,000 sales - new stats

21 Apr 2016

The auctions go on even if my posting here is getting rather rare: we now have 31,008 recorded auction sales in the database. As usual, here are the overall statistics, with some notes on the changes since 30,000 sales.

The 31,008 sales result from 70,510 auctions started, so the success ratio (i.e., auctions resulting in a sale) is 43.97% (44.31% last time), continuing the downward trend. The number of successful auctions per month also continues to fall, and is now at 219.4, from 228.4 after 30,000 sales.

There are 1050 different editions and variants listed separately at BDKR.com. Of those 977 have appeared in at least one successful sale, which adds two more to the listing. Of the 977 editions seen, 49 have appeared once only (again an improvement - there were 53 once-only editions last time). The most sold edition is, as ever, Great Britain 7 (1910) with 246 sales (240 last time). Generalgouvernment remains the most sold German edition and stands at 222 sales (last time 215). The best-selling French edition is also firmly established, being Sud-Est de la France 9 (1910), of which 90 have been sold (88 at 30,000 sales). Of the 31,008 books, 13,904 (44.8%) were in German, 13,306 (42.9%) in English and 3,798 (12.2%) in French. This is basically unchanged since last time, so it remains a steady rule, as it has from inception, that out of seven sold books, three are in German, three in English and one in French.

The total sale price for the books was €972,838.32, giving an average price of €31.37, which continues the falling trend. If all the books had gone for their BDKR guideline price, the total sales would have been €2,562,480, so the ratio is now down just under 38%.

As ever, just treat these stats as a bit of fun - my statistics training is non-existent. The stats also appear in shortened form every day on the stats page. If you'd like some other data, please feel free to ask!

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