Over 700 vintage posters in a broad range of categories are featured in our summer sale, including American and international travel, advertising, pictorial maps, Art Nouveau, European design, art exhibition, classic sci-fi movie posters, theater, magic, and others. Highlights include L'Hippodrome (1905) by Orazi, numerous classic mid-century airline posters by TWA, Pan Am, and their peers, and an extensive collection of Hawaii travel posters.

Our fall sale of magicana features 300 lots including an array of apparatus (both vintage and modern), ephemera, and collectible books, as well as the magic props and memorabilia from the career of the noted sleight-of-hand magician David Roth.

Our September sale features the remarkable circus archives of John & Jan Zweifel. Lifelong circus fans and collectors, the Zweifels' archives were home to tens of thousands of documents, photographs, and relics, including correspondence and memorabilia, as well as circus and wild west costumes, posters, and banners. Among the featured lots will be objects and documents from the life and career of Tom Thumb and Buffalo Bill, as well as P.T. Barnum, and nearly every "greatest show on earth" of the last century.

Our fall book sale will be a major high spot for the department this year. We are offering several items that are only found institutionally including a presentation copy of the Bodley Head Ulysses signed by Joyce and a book owned by Ernest Shackleton that was taken by him on the Nimrod Voyage. Other major works include Audubon's Birds of America complete in octavo, a complete set of Cook's voyage with the elusive atlas, a presentation copy of Oscar Wilde's to Oscar Browning, a massive collection of fore–edge paintings, and several choice bindings. 

The third sale from this legendary collection of magicana will bring to the auction block a unique array of treasures from the legendary "museum down the mineshaft." Among the featured lots are a unique three-sheet Alexander/Adelaide Herrmann lithograph, Houdini's mechanical Blooming Rosebush (constructed by the enigmatic Rudolph Schlosser), Karl Germain's Spirit Cabinet (with original packing trunk), Harry Kellar's Vanishing Lamp, and a host of objects with significant historical association. Unusual devices of wonder from the workshops of Okito, Thayer, and Martin will be offered along with a strong selection of seance room equipment, spook show posters, and rare books and ephemera related to spiritualism, the afterlife, and the apparent abilities of mediums of yesteryear to communicate with the "great beyond." Hardbound catalogs are now available for pre-order - in limited quantities - for $55. Catalogs ship in late September.