WELCOME – Book Auctions

Your Consignment Offers
for our Auctions in Autumn 2025 are already being accepted now

FROM OUR FALL AUCTION October 28-31, 2025:

Book of Hours with 8 miniatures. Manuscript on parchment. Flanders around 1450

FROM OUR RECENT AUCTIONS:

B. v. Breydenbach. Reysen gein Iherusalem. Speyer, about 1505. – First illustrated book of travel ever printed
A. Vesalius. De humani corporis fabrica. Basel 1543 – First Edition
Book of hours. Follower of Simon Bening. Bruges(?), c. 1530
J. de Mandeville. Questo sie El Libro de Iohanne de Mandauilla. Milan, 26. June 1502

Your Consignment Offers
for our Auctions in Autumn 2025 are already being accepted now

FROM RECENT AUCTION SALES FALL 2024:

A. Ortelius. Theatrum orbis terrarum. Antwerp 1603-1607. - Complete copy in splendid contemporary colouring € 60,000.
Maria Sibylla Merian. Insectes de Surinam & de l'Europe. The Hague 1726 and Amsterdam 1730. Hammer price: 55,000 €
J. Godinot. Manière de cultiver la vigne et de faire le vin en Champagne. Reims 1722. Hammer price: 22,000 €

Your Consignment Offers
for our Auctions in Autumn 2025 are already being accepted now

FROM AUCTION SALES SPRING 2024:

G. Mercator. Atlas sive Cosmographicae meditationes. Amsterdam 1630. – with 164 engr. maps with contemp. colouring. Hammer price € 42,000

FROM AUCTION SALES OF  2023:

Latin Book of Hours. Manuscript on vellum. Northern France or Flanders, second half of the 15th century. With 17 large and 16 smaller miniatures painted in colours and gold - Sold for € 30.000 hammer price
C. Ptolemaeus. Cosmographia. Woodcut maps in contemporary colouring of the edition Ulm 1486. Text of the edition Rome 1490. - The most famous atlas of the middle ages - Sold at € 190.000 hammer

Your Consignment Offers
for our Auctions in Autumn 2025 are already being accepted now

From our past spring auction 2023:
W. & J. Blaeu. Toonneel des Aerdriicx, ofte Nieuwe Atlas. 6 vols. Amsterdam 1635 – c. 1685. - Altogether 509 mainly double-page engraved maps with fine contemp. colouring by hand
Estimate: 70,000 €
Hammer: 160,000 €

MORE NOTEWORTHY HAMMER PRICES FROM PAST SALES:

Sold at spring sales 2022:
K. Marx & F. Engels, Kommunistisches Manifest
First edition, First printing - Hitherto unknown copy
Estimate: 70,000€ - Hammer Price: 300,000€
Sold at spring sales 2022:
Book of Hours for the Use of Metz, 1320-1340
Estimate: 50,000€ - Hammer Price 100,000€

Autumn Sales 2022: Consignment offers welcome

Your Consignment Offers
for our Auctions in Autumn 2025 are already being accepted now

Reiss & Sohn was founded 1971 and is a specialized company for auctioning, buying and selling of rare antiquarian books, manuscripts, maps, prints and photography. Read more about the company

Next book auctions: rare books, manuscripts and maps taking place april 28th-30th 2020. Consignment offers welcome now.

1,28 Mio € – Highest ever Auction Result for a Printed Book at a German Auction

At an auction sale of Reiss & Sohn in 2017 the very first printing of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses”, published in 1517 and marking the beginning of the protestant reform was called up at an estimated price of

150,000 €. After a fierce bidding contest between room and telephones this “milestone-of-printing” went to a proud buyer who participated by telephone and realized a total of 1,28 Mio €, a record price in the history of German book auction sales.

 1 Million Euro for an Incunabulum at Auction

In fall 2021 the book auction house Reiss & Sohn sold a copy of the rare first incunable edition of “Rudimentum Novitiorum” (publ. 1475)  from the presses of the famous prototypographer and Luebeck printer Lucas Brandis. Besides useful and up-to-date knowledge for the young clergyman and student the work comprises a number of important early maps, representing the medieval knowledge of the world. The auction was 1 Million Euro (incl. buyer’s premium), which is the highest price received for this work at auction.

Reiss & Sohn
Your reliable business partner for valuable books, manuscripts and maps.
Book auctions since 1971

News

CATALOGUE PREVIEW  AUTUMN AUCTIONS 2025

The CATALOGUE PREVIEW with an extensive selection of objects from the upcoming auctions is now available online. The selection with descriptions and pictures will be regularly updated with further entries.

You can add objects of your interest to your personal bookmarks list (registration required). The entries of your bookmarks list will be retained when the auction catalogues are published. The catalogue preview can be sorted according to various criteria and is accessible via full-text search. There are three different list views to choose from.

The total number of items on offer can be viewed when the auction catalogues are published approx. 4 weeks before the auction date.

Bids cannot be accepted before the auction catalogues are published. We reserve the right to make changes to descriptions and images, to remove items from the catalogue preview and to make any other changes.

Carum est, quod rarum est

Yesterday, May 07, 2025. – Day 2 of the extensive spring auctions began with a wide variety of books from various fields, such as Varia, architecture and old literature. From the afternoon onwards, the auction focussed on incunabula, manuscripts, old printed books and Reformation literature, which was extremely successful. This resulted in considerable increases in estimated prices. The richly illustrated Indian manuscript Hitopadesha (lot 631), a collection of fables and wisdom sayings, had already generated a great deal of interest beforehand, increasing its estimate of 20,000 euros by 275% to a hammer price of 75,000 euros. A pretty small-format book of hours in the style of the Ghent-Bruges school of painting was knocked down for 15,000 euros hammer price (lot 635). The incunabula section included some very early and rare Cologne prints, which were heavily bid for, especially online. Particularly noteworthy here was lot 685, a manuscript by J. Gerson, De efficacia orationis, printed by Cologne’s first printer Ulrich Zell around 1468: estimate 3,000 euros/supplement 7,500 euros. Also lot 694: Juvencus, Evangeliorum libri, Cologne 1500 (estimate 1,200 euros/surcharge 5,000 euros). The beautifully illustrated first edition of the treatise on the rosary brotherhoods ‘Liber fratenitatis rosaceae coronae’, Cologne, circa 1500, achieved a hammer price of 5,500 euros (estimate 1,800 euros, lot 705).

Rare and influential works were also valued in the Old Prints department and rewarded with high hammer prices. For example, lot 753: P. Crinito, Libri de poetas & De honesta disciplina. Two important and influential works of Italian humanism, in a rare first edition, in one volume (estimate 3,000 euro/surcharge 12,000 euro). Furthermore, the 12th German edition of the famous cosmography by Sebastian Münster from 1569, hammer price 10,000 euros/valuation 4,000 euros (lot 810).

The auction of books, atlases, prints and photographs from the geography catalogue 225 begins today, Thursday, and will continue until tomorrow afternoon: AUCTION CATALOGUE 225

Das ist ein sehr kurzer Test!

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