Bonhams Sells Rare Letter from Walt Disney for $16,450
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and more. Collectors, book dealers and fans of noted authors and celebrities
vied for military collectibles, rare first editions and entertainment
memorabilia during Bonhams & Butterfields’ Spring Books & Manuscripts
sale, an auction simulcast between Los Angeles and San Francisco which totaled
nearly $925,000.
The majority of the bidding was done over the phone.
Banks of telephone bidders assisted clients across the country and overseas this
morning and afternoon, with multiple bidding battles pushing prices for rare and
important material above their pre-sale estimates.
Regular readers of
Scoop may remember having read in our March 18 edition about the
surveillance reports filed on Marilyn Monroe. It seems Joe DiMaggio was
concerned for his wife and had hired a detective to follow her. That report
brought $1,293.
Also featured in that edition was a letter from Walt
Disney to a child he had met at a hospital. The child had written him a letter
asking why he was re-releasing Snow White. Disney took the time to
directly write him back with an explanation. Written on official Disney Snow
White stationary, the letter realized $16,450
A bidder paid $25,850 for a
lavishly bound illuminated manuscript by Alberto Sangorski of Abe Lincoln’s
Gettysburg speech and Second Inaugural Address. These pages were bound together
with a copy of Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain!
Selling
within estimate was a rare copy of a Galileo first edition published in 1632.
This work, banned by the Inquisition shortly after its printing, sold for
$49,938 and stemmed from a noted private collection. Another Galileo lot saw
competitive bidding based on its scarceness — a 1631 copy of a tribute to
Galileo opened for bidding under $2,000 and sold for $31,725.
Details
can be read at www.bonhams.com.
