Rare Books Sale Toppers, reprint

AbeBooks' 2011 Most Expensive Sales

By Nate Pedersen on December 29, 2011

I'm a sucker for year-end lists and I enjoyed reading Abebooks' freshly released list of its most expensive sales in 2011. The list is conveniently divided into a variety of categories - overall highest sales figures are followed by an array of genres and fields, including science fiction, mystery, photography, art, science, travel, and religion.



By far the highest grosser this year was a first edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx which went for a little over $50,000. It doubled the price of the runner-up, a signed first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird which took in $25,000. Other notables in the top ten include a complete run of Aspen magazine ($22,900), a first edition of The Hobbit ($20,400), and a first edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs de Mal ($14,900). The most unique item on the list was a handwritten manuscript by John Ruskin reflecting on his reading of Thomas Carlyle which was purchased for $18,700.

In children's literature, the most expensive sale was a signed, complete set of the deluxe editions of the Harry Potter books, which took in $11,700.