RESEARCH PAPER NO. 830

THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK AUCTION RECORDS

by

STUART KELLS

JANUARY 2002

Department of Economics. University of Melbourne. Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the Australian Book Auction Records, a dataset of prices and other information collected from auctions of rare books. The dataset contains a large number of prices from Australian rare book auctions, and a much smaller number from London rare book auctions. All the books in the records are connected in some way to Australasia. The sources and inclusion criteria of the records are set out, and the process of converting the records into a digital database is described. The paper presents a statistical profile of the data which includes the distribution of prices, the sizes of the auction events documented and details about repeat sales. The usefulness of the data is discussed, and suggestions for supplementing the data are provided, along with directions for future research.