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A sale that worked out just fine…
November 21, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
In a day & age when sales of items between people can be fraught with troubles, here is an interesting “sale” that seemed to work out just fine. It appeared in “The London Chronicle” issue of June 4, 1767:
“Electioneering”… Little has changed…
October 31, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
The piece shown is from the front page of “The Massachusetts Centinel” of Boston, March 31, 1787. Although written over 222 years ago it doesn’t seem as though much has changed with “electioneering” (see below).
Some more prices, then and now…
October 6, 2009 by TimHughes · 1 Comment
Some months ago I reflected upon the value of newspapers we have sold years ago compared to more current values for the same title and event. Having published catalogs since 1977 it is interesting to pull out some of the early editions and see what we sold newspapers for many years ago.
Although we are careful to never recommend early or historic newspapers as investments, many have done well over the years. Not surprisingly, those which are most historic and less common have appreciated the best, while others—particularly titles which tend to come available from time to time—have appreciated but not at an exceptional pace. A few examples:
Within our catalogs created in 1980, twenty-nine years ago, are several entries which we still are able to keep in inventory such as “Harper’s Weekly” of July 22, 1876 with coverage of the Custer massacre. We sold it then for $32, and offer it today for $112. Using an inflation calculator the $32 would have inflated to $82.57 today. Also in “Harper’s Weekly” we sold Oct. 4, 1862 with a printing of the Emancipation Proclamation for $52 ($134.28 in today’s dollars), while today we sell it for $125. The same title for March 22, 1862 on the Monitor vs. the Merrimack sold then for $38 ($98.05 in today’s dollars) and for $113 today.
Although “Harper’s Weekly” remains a very desirable title and has most certainly become more scarce as the years have gone by, I would not consider it a rare title. Consequently some prices have exceeded inflation while some have not.
But somewhat less common titles, and more significant events, have had more interesting price changes. In 1980 we sold the “New York Tribune” of April 4, 1865 which reported the fall of Richmond and had a huge eagle engraving on the front page, for $48 ($123.85 in today’s dollars). Not long ago we sold the same issue for $477. And in 1980 we sold the “Gazette of the United States” of March 2, 1791 on the creation of the Bank of the United States, for $19 ($49.03 in today’s dollars) and a more recent sale was for $775.
Of courses naivete (or perhaps stupidity) was the reason for many low prices years ago. Back in the “early years” I simply didn’t have the experience of knowing how desirable some events would be for collectors. If I bought an item for $20 and sold it for $30 I was happy.
Pricing has become much more sophisticated the last ten years or so, but I’m sure we still offer some interesting gems of history at relatively low prices which will take on much greater desirability as the years progress. Part of the fun of the hobby is seeking them out.
Could have been worded better…
October 3, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
The following appeared in “The Daily Courant” newspaper from London, January 2, 1705:
“This day is publish’d, Her Majesty’s Head finely Engrav’d upon a Copper Plate fifteen Inches square, and Adorn’d after the manner of Penmanship. Price 6d. Sold by J.Nutt near Stationers-Hall. “
Wrappers and no wrappers…
October 1, 2009 by TimHughes · 1 Comment
As regular customers have noticed, our only foray into the world of magazines is pretty much limited to 18th century titles. Magazine collecting of the 19th and 20th centuries is a world onto itself and there are many other dealers who make such items their specialty. I never felt a need to venture there.
Occasionally one will see our listings of magazines which note “with original wrappers” and perhaps wondered what this meant. Most magazines which were sold “on the street” came with a wrapper, or front and back cover, which was in addition to the typical title page of the magazine. Typically the wrapper would have a blue or blue-green tint. Some wrappers had a decorative embellishment and some had the table of contents. The reverse side of the front wrapper and both sides of the back wrapper commonly had advertisements, often for books or other publications offered by the printer.
But magazines with wrappers are rarely found. At least 98% of the 18th century magazines on the market today came from bound volumes. The volumes were created when libraries–whether personal or institutional–had an entire year’s edition of a title bound into book form for efficient storage & display on a bookcase. And many magazine publishers set aside extra copies of each month’s edition for binding and sale to patrons at the conclusion of each year. Since wrappers were considered superfluous they were almost always removed from the issues before being bound. The binding process also involved trimming the three exposed margins for a neater appearance. Consequently when loose issues became available to collectors centuries later through library deaccessionings, they were lacking the wrappers.
Those fortunate enough to find a magazine which survived the last several centuries without being bound may experience the great pleasure of having a magazine “as issued”, or with the wrappers intact and without the margins trimmed. Such find are quite rare.
I have discovered many over the course of the last 33 years, and have even had the pleasure to find an occasional bound volume of an 18th century title with the wrappers bound in, either with each of the monthly issues or grouped collectively at the back of the volume. Such wrappers would have trimmed margins, which is less then ideal, but wrappers with trimmed margins are far better than no wrappers at all. And perhaps in just one or two instances I encountered a volume with wrappers bound in and margins untrimmed.
In any case, magazines with wrappers intact are the goal for serious collectors of 18th century magazines. Not surprisingly such issues command a premium price, but their rarity also creates a high level of desirability.
“News Rooms”: a curiosity of the past…
September 21, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
One last excerpt from Clarence Brigham’s book “Journals & Journeymen” is worthy of sharing with follow collectors as it explores a part of newspaper history of which most are unaware. The chapter is titled “News Rooms”:
An interesting custom in newspaper history was the establishment in the early 1800’s of news rooms at nearly all of the larger towns. Somewhat akin to this idea was a project carried out at a much earlier day at Bridgeton, New Jersey. Here in December 1775, & continuing for two months, a weekly paper called “The Plain Dealer”, consisting of essays but with topics relating to the problems of the colonies, was written out in manuscript and posted up in Matthew Potter’s tavern. It enabled readers to gather at a central meeting place and peruse a weekly publication, which they would not trouble, or perhaps could not afford, to purchase.
Soon after 1800 reading rooms sprang up in several towns. In Boston the Anthology Reading Room was established in 1806, with 160 subscribers, and making available all the leading newspapers of the country. In 1808 Samuel Gilbert established at Boston what may have been the first commercial news room in the country. It was located in the Exchange Coffee House, erected in 1808, with its “Reading Room and Marine Diary” on the entrance floor where newspaper files could be consulted.
In New York, John H. Payne in 1811 opened a reading room where could be found the most important newspapers and magazines of the day. Charleston had a newsroom in 1813 where the terms were ten dollars for subscribers and strangers one dollar a month. In fact, almost every city and larger town before 1820 had its news room where leading newspapers were regularly filed. To enumerate them would require a lengthy chapter and necessitate an exacting study of early newspaper advertisements. Unfortunately there is no record of a new room proprietor preserving his files for posterity.
The Next Must-Read Book for Newspaper Collectors
September 14, 2009 by admin · 9 Comments
Mott, Emery, Thomas, Tebbel and Brigham are household authors on the bookshelves of most newspaper collectors, but another name needs to be added to the list. Eric Burns.
Burns is the author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism.
Most of us have read — on more than one occasion — about the history of Public Occurrences, The Boston News-Letter, Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal and Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. But how often do we get to read these stories and many distinct others from a book published in the 21st century?
Perhaps what thrilled me the most about this book was its style. To me, Burns was masterful at marrying the story-telling flair of David McCullough with the newspaper history acumen of Mott, Emery and others. More so, I enjoyed learning several fun facts and exciting stories about many of the newspaper titles I see for sale at rarenewspapers.com or even hold in my own collection.
The Boston Gazette, according to Burns’ C-SPAN presentation on his book, is the most influential newspaper this country has ever known. He says the Gazette got us into the Revolutionary War, sped up the course of the war and may have even determined the outcome of the war. A good chunk of Infamous Scribblers is dedicated to supporting this thesis.
“Almost certainly the war would not have ended with an American victory in a period of seven years — from first shot to signed treaty — had not the newspapers constantly reminded the colonists of the cause they shared, thereby inspiring the valor of soldiers, and the patience and support of civilians,” Burns said.
He points out that newspapers were the only form of media at the time and served as the great unifier of our nation during a time when America “needed unity as much as we needed ammunition.”
Here are a few fascinating excerpts from Infamous Scribblers:
On a printer’s disincentive to publish a newspaper: “Despite a New World population of more than 300,000 by 1700, there were not enough customers of newspapers — too few English speakers in America, too few towns and villages that were too widely scattered to allow for news to be gathered efficiently and a paper to be distributed economically.”
On a newspaper’s role in the Revolutionary War: “It was Franklin, though, who most succinctly and accurately assessed the role of the media in the days leading up to the war. It was he, astute as ever, who pointed out that the press not only can ‘strike while the iron is hot,’ but it can ‘heat it by continually striking.'”
On Sam Adams: “The least ethical newsman of the entire colonial era, if not the entire history of American journalism.”
On 18th century journalism: “As a rule, newspaper publishers of the time did not chase after interviews or hustle to the scenes of events with their juices flowing and pen fingers twitching. For the most part, they were denizens of the print shop, preferring that the news be spoken in their ears or slipped under their doors — that it be delivered to them, in other words, as spices were delivered to the grocer or bolts of clothes to the tailor.”
On reporting and publishing during the Revolutionary War: “The Revolutionary War was not an easy one to cover. For one thing, once the fighting started there was more news than ever but no more shipments of ink or type or spare parts for the presses coming into American ports. There were no more shipments of paper either, and, as for the quantities still available or smuggled into the colonies from a friend in the motherland or a trader in another European nation, there were higher priorities for it than journalism.”
On an unlikely spy embedded as a printer: “Jemmy Rivington’s Tory newspaper, the Royal Gazette, was extremely critical of George Washington. However, Rivington was also a spy who passed along secrets of the British navy to colonial leaders. On one occasion, Rivington helped break a British code that almost surely saved American lives during one of the war’s earlier battles.”
On printing business diversification: “Colonial printers did not just publish newspapers… they continued to publish documents for agencies of government and various other materials such as sermons, speeches, and contracts, for private clients… they turned out pamphlets, Sunday supplements of a sort, commentaries on the news of the day…”
On the importance of 18th century newspapers: “Perhaps the importance of the press to the outcome of the war can be exaggerated, but not easily and not by much. It was newspapers that kept the colonies informed of the progress of the fighting in a way that letters and patterers could not have done, and in the process united the colonies in a way that was beyond the ability of the jerry-built wartime government.”
This post was authored by Todd Andrlik, a collector of rare and historic newspapers that you can follow at toddand.com and raglinen.com. Todd recently launched the Historic Newspapers Network for the newspaper collecting community.
Early printing in the New World…
September 10, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
Another book I find very useful, although out of print, is “Printing In The Americas” by John Clyde Oswald, 1937. From time to time I will print excerpts from it which hopefully will be of interest to collectors, including the following which touches upon the very earliest years of printing in the “new world”.
“Printing in the English colonies began during the first half of the 17th century, at which time the art was at a low ebb in Europe, and it is therefore not surprising that the printers who came to the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean were not of outstanding ability; they were but representative of the class from which they sprang.
The first person to print in what is now the United States was a boy 18 years of age, upon whose immature shoulders had unexpectedly been thrown a heavy burden of responsibility. This boy, Matthew Daye (later in life he dropped the final ‘e’), began to print in a newly built house on the bleak shore of New England, on the edge of the forbidding wilderness that surrounded it on all sides but that which faced the sea. The year was 1638, just 18 years after the Pilgrims landed.
A new nation was in the making, in which life eventually came to embrace everything worth while, but in which in the beginning, as was to be expected, artistic accomplishment & progress were almost wholly absent. The settlers were too much occupied with the immediate necessity of clearing away the forests, harnessing the water power, building homes, founding towns and setting up local governments, to be able to find time to devote to the refinements of daily living. The primal wants had first to be satisfied. Then came the Revolutionary War, with its strain upon their resources, and later the need of facing and solving the world problems that accompanied the birth of the new nation.
The scarcity of great printers in Europe during the 17th century is to be ascribed to the fact that printing, controlled by Church and State, had ceased to be a means of art expression and had become merely a vehicle for the transmission of information (and misinformation). In England the number of printers and type founders was limited, and they were licensed and operated under strict surveillance. Restrictive measures of a somewhat similar nature were enforced in other countries.
The ruling powers endeavored to stretch a restraining army across the Atlantic to the colonies newly planted there, and they were at first partly successful because they were represented by governors subservient to their whims. the oft-quoted remark of Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, will be recalled:
But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundreds years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.”
King James II, on ascending the English throne in 1685, sent this instruction to Governor Dongan, in New York:
“And for as much as great inconvenience may arise by the liberty of printing within our province of New York; you are to provide by all necessary Orders that noe person keep any press for printing, nor that any book pamphlet or other matters whatsoever bee printed without your special leave & license first obtained.”
For 40 years thereafter this paragraph appeared in the instructions to colonial governors. Great was the respect paid by the common people of Europe to constituted authority. The bowed head and bended knee were therefore attitude familiar to the colonists; but contact with this constituted authority came to them only through the local governors and their minions, and often the closeness of the contact disclosed the fact that the supposed gods were in reality made of clay. Respect, reverence even, might for a time be publicly shown for a governor in gold lace, who proved on acquaintance to be vain, shallow, and incompetent, but it could not be privately felt, and under such circumstances the public showing was certain in time to come to an end.”
How shall we address the President?
August 31, 2009 by TimHughes · 2 Comments
Although we may think it odd today, back in 1789 when our federal government was just being formed and George Washington was inaugurated as America’s first President, there was little precedence as to how to address the new chief executive of the government. The only examples given by the European powers were royalty where “your highness” or “your excellency” were appropriate. But what about a democratically elected President?
The article shown is taken from the “Gazette of the United States” newspaper from New York, May 16, 1789, about two weeks after Washington was inaugurated. It provides some interesting insight in to the thoughts of the day when the government was truly in its infancy.
The “Carrier’s Address”…
August 27, 2009 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
Credit for portions of the following must be given to Clarence Brigham & his work “Journals & Journeymen”, as well as to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.
During the nineteenth century, newspaper carriers were often not paid by the publishers of the papers. They typically depended upon donations from patrons at the end of the year. To remind the public that the carriers depended on their donations, newspaper publishers issued poetic broadsides or booklets for New Years Day. These poems often recounted the major news stories of the previous year, but always closed with a plea to pay the carrier.
They were rarely saved since they contained no news reports and as a result are rather rare today. Although many Carriers’ Addresses were contained within the body of the first newspaper issue in the new year, the most sought after are the broadside editions, printed on one side of a sheet of paper typically with ornate lettering, decorative borders, etc. The more decorative the Address the more collectible. The “New York Weekly Museum” address for 1790 had an engraving of a boy delivering a paper at a doorway, one of just a few with such an illustration.
The earliest known examples were done for the “American Weekly Mercury” of Philadelphia in 1720, 1721 and 1723 although none have been found. The earliest located for the American Antiquarian Society is that of January 1, 1735. Benjamin Franklin included them in his “Pennsylvania Gazette” as early as 1739 (see photo).
The amount of the donation expected by the carrier was generally left to the customer. Many of the verses concluded with such a sentiment as “Remember the poor printer’s Devil” or “Be bounteous to the Printer’s boy”. Sometimes the sentiment was more definite, such as “I won’t Refuse a six pence” and “Please keep the cents and–give the silver”.
By the 1870’s the custom began to fall off, likely due to the beginning of more commercial & larger influential newspapers which considered such a custom undignified, also falling away in favor of the distribution of Christmas or New Year’s cards by the end of the 19th century. The latest located for the American Antiquarian Society is dated 1904.