Another year is in the books, and it is time for us to reflect on the past. Every year comes with ups and downs, and we feel quite fortunate for everything that we have, from our family, to our friends, to our business. While our business keeps us busy, we always prioritize time with our loved ones. This year we had memorable family trips to Hawaii, the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and New York City. We also spent time in Snowshoe, West Virginia for skiing and snowboarding in the winter and mountain biking and hiking in the summer. It’s one of our favorite family getaways! We now have two high schoolers, with our eldest applying to universities for the fall. We’re hoping he’ll end up close to home, but there will be big changes up ahead regardless of where he decides to go. Fortunately, we have wonderful friends around us who have been through this process before and can help us through the transition.
We are lucky that many of our customers have also become our friends, and we always look forward to people visiting us at our office. If you are ever in the Richmond, Virginia area, we hope you will come see us! Depending on when you come, you might get to meet Joe, who assists us in cataloging and writing articles, Megan, who does our packaging and shipping, or our 14-year-old dog, Daisy, who can usually be found napping.
This year did not allow us much time for napping, as we presented six auctions in 2024, including a special 200th auction in October. We focused our efforts this year on bringing in higher value items, and even though we listed fewer items at auction, we increased our total low estimate by 7% over 2023. Adding more valuable material to our auctions also helped us improve our average hammer price from $377 in 2023 to $408 in 2024, an 8% increase.
Unfortunately, our sell-through, which is calculated as the percent of items that sold at auction, decreased by nearly 4% from 2023 to 2024. However, our sell-through was slightly higher than the industry average of 76% as reported by Rare Book Hub, which aggregates auction results from the rare, antiquarian and collectible market globally.
In addition to evaluating our performance against last year, we also like to compare to pre-pandemic years (before 2020), when our goal was always to achieve 75% sell-through. In comparison with 2019 and previous years, our 2024 sell-through was strong, especially in light of the fact that we offered nearly 10% more material.
Trends in Cartography
The mix of material we offered in our auctions in 2024 was similar to 2023 for most regions. The key differences were a decrease in items related to North America and an increase in items related to Europe. This change did not result in the optimal mix and is likely the reason for OWA’s lower sell-through this year, as maps of European regions and cities continue to be soft in the market.
We generally divide the material in our auctions into 40 distinct categories, including the world, each of the continents, regional maps within each continent, polar maps, the oceans, prints, atlases, reference books, historical documents, etc. We then review how each category performed, based on sell-through and the percent that sell at or above the reserve amount. In the last few years, maps of the world, western hemisphere, North America, United States, and maps of US states and cities have consistently been some of our best-selling categories, both in terms of sell-through and hammer prices achieved. Atlases have been steadily gaining in popularity over the last five years to become our top-selling category in 2024. On the other end of the spectrum, regional maps within Europe and Asia have performed poorly over the last 5 years. And while maps of the continent of Europe sell above average, maps of the continent of Asia were the lowest performing category in 2024, and have been on a steady decline over the last 5 years. The same is true for maps of the Caribbean, which were one of OWA’s top selling categories in 2020 with a sell-through of 90%, but have been gradually declining each year since.
Trends by Century
We also track the popularity of maps published in each century. The last few years, the trends by century have remained relatively consistent. Twentieth century maps continue to be very popular, as we sold 91% of those that we listed, and 80% of them sold at or above the reserve amount.
Top Selling Items
For the sixth year in a row, the majority of our top selling lots (7 out of 10) were focused on the United States. Of these, the geographies were quite spread-out, including maps of California (2), Florida, Vermont, Mid-Atlantic, Western US, as well as one of the entire US. The time periods of the top 10 were also equally distributed, with one map from the 17th century, and three maps each from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Our top items from outside of the US include a print of Gibraltar and a map of the Black Sea region – two regions that have shown strength this year. The top 10 list, determined as a percentage of the high estimate, includes:
1. Auction 198 - Lot 101.Outline Map of Indian Localities in 1833, by George Catlin, 1842. Sold for $1,200 -- 667% above the high estimate 2. Auction 197 - Lot 727.The Raising ye Siege of Gibraltar, & Destroying Mons'r Ponti's Squadron, by Anonymous, 1750. Sold for $800 -- 471% above the high estimate 3. Auction 196 - Lot 221.[Map in Brochure] Location of the Florida East Coast Hotels Reached Only Via the Florida East Coast Railway, by Rand Avery Supply Co., 1900. Sold for $1,300 -- 433% above the high estimate 4. Auction 196 - Lot 182.Map of Routes for a Pacific Railroad, by Lieutenant G.K. Warren, 1855. Sold for $1,600 -- 427% above the high estimate 5. Auction 196 - Lot 273.Historical Map of Vermont, by John Buck, 1933-34. Sold for $375 -- 417% above the high estimate 6. Auction 196 - Lot 152.Nova Virginiae Tabula, by Hondius/Blaeu, 1642. Sold for $8,500 -- 405% above the high estimate 7. Auction 198 - Lot 627.An Epitome Geographical and Political of Hindoostan, by William Faden, 1788. Sold for $600 -- 400% above the high estimate 8. Auction 201 - Lot 226.Distribution of Types of Homes, E. San Pedro, by Anonymous, 1930. Sold for $700 -- 389% above the high estimate 9. Auction 199 - Lot 183.[4 Early Views of California Bound in] Reports of Explorations and Surveys...for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, by Charles Koppel, 1856. Sold for $1,500 -- 353% above the high estimate 10. Auction 201 - Lot 557.Des Neueroffneten Kriegs-Theatri in Ruszland und Turckey, by Adam Jonathan Felssecker, 1740. Sold for $3,250 -- 325% above the high estimate
Looking strictly at our highest dollar performers also reveals a nice mix of material, with 3 of our top 5 selling items featured in our special 200th auction in October: “Cartographic Treasures.” The top performer was Purchas His Pilgrimes, which features both the John Smith map of Virginia and Henry Briggs’ map of North America. Other highlights include a very rare map of the Carolinas and a sumptuous world map centered on the Americas:
1. Auction 200 - Lot 4.[5 Volumes] Purchas His Pilgrimes. In Five Bookes, by Samuel Purchas, 1625-26. Sold for $40,000 2. Auction 200 - Lot 1.Nova, et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio, by Oronce Fine, 1531. Sold for $35,000 3. Auction 200 - Lot 3.La Cosmographie Universelle, by Sebastian Munster, 1560. Sold for $32,500 4. Auction 196 - Lot 162.A New Map of Carolina, by Thornton, Morden & Lea, 1685. Sold for $25,500 5. Auction 196 - Lot 85.[On 2 Sheets] Carte Nouvelle de la Mer du Sud, by Andries & Hendrik de Leth, 1740. Sold for $17,500
Our Bidders
Another important aspect of the business is bidder participation. In 2024, 15% of our bidders were new to OWA, and over half of our bidders have been customers for at least 5 years. We take pride in the fact that our customers continue to bid in our auctions year after year.
Our growing customer base continues to be as global as our auction catalogs. During 2024, we had bidders from 54 countries, stretching from Chile to Iceland, from Estonia to Japan, and from the United Arab Emirates to New Zealand. While the majority of our customers live in the United States, the top 5 countries outside of the US that are represented are the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy and Spain. We appreciate the opportunity to work with and learn from wonderful people across the globe – it is quite inspiring!
Percent of Bidders by Continent
The Year Ahead
As we usher in a new year, there is uncertainty across the globe – wars, political instability, economic uncertainty, displacement and migration, climatic events, and more. It’s quite a lot to take in and process, quite frankly. But despite these challenges, the US economy continues to grow and the stock markets continue to set new all-time highs. We remain confident about the auction market in 2025, and we have already received some new and exciting material for our upcoming auctions. We are still accepting consignments for all our upcoming auctions, so if you’d like to capture some of this positive momentum, please view our instructions for submitting consignments.
We are particularly looking for consignments in the following categories:
Maps of the world, western hemisphere and North America
Maps of the United States, especially regional maps of the East, South, West and Southwest, as well as the states of California, Florida, Hawaii, Texas and Virginia.
Maps of the Gulf of Mexico and North Pacific Ocean
Atlases
From all of us at Old World Auctions, we wish you and your families a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!
Our dog, Daisy (a PBGV), “guarding” our reference library!
