UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — What do Copernicus and Calvin & Hobbes have in common?
You can find both of them side by side this weekend at the 63rd annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue Armory this weekend, where bibliophiles and casual browsers can browse rare collections at all sorts of price points.
For example — Copernicus? A fine, first edition copy of “De revolutionibus,” the first book to propose a heliocentric universe printed in 1543?
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Sophia Rare Books, hailing from Copenhagen’s meat packing district, has a copy at booth E24 listed for $2.5 million.
To its immediate right sits a green, first edition copy of Darwin’s “On The Origins Of Species” for $950,000.
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And in the booth next door is Michael DiRuggiero from The Manhattan Rare Book Company, who was more than happy to show off his ultra-rare, full-color signed proof print of the last ever Calvin & Hobbes comic strip that notoriously anti-commercial author Bill Waterson made as a thank you for a handful of newspapers that carried his beloved comic for over a decade.
“I actually got it for myself personally and kept it a while,” DiRuggiero told Patch.
It’s yours for $35,000.
Sellers at the book fair range from the ultra rare and pricy — the notoriously expensive Shakespeare’s First Folio is already set aside on reserve at the price of $7.5 million, but the Second and the rarer Third are still available for $550,000 and $1.5 million respectively — to the quirky — Warhol and Studio 54 ephemera, two separate collections of incredible Kurt Vonnegut letters filled with illustrations and doodles — and the sublime.
Among the ultra rare is one of the few surviving original 1972 NYC Subway maps, designed by modernist Massimo Vignelli, for $7,500.
Other rare and interesting items include an early typed draft of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” colorful French anti-Vietnam war art posters, a copy of a 1928 speech Marcus Garvey gave at London’s Royal Albert Hall, a counter-culture stoner board game about drug smuggling from 1971 called “Scam” and a 1965 educational comic book produced by the NYC Department of Health Services called “Johnny Gets the Word” about a man discovering that “he’s caught the ‘siff’ (syphillis).”
There’s only four known copies and it’s one of the more affordable options at a pedestrian $250.
But for even less is a booth by the front who, in addition to their beautiful selection of pricy colorful complete manuscripts, offers a selection of small pages from unfinished manuscripts selling for about $100 each or so.
If you are a major rare books collector or just someone who wants to see what the collection of human knowledge looked like 400 years ago, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair runs until Sunday at the Park Avenue Armory between East 66th and 67th streets on the Upper East Side.
Doors open at noon each day and close at 8 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday.
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