Christie's auction

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Wed Feb 16 13:55:38 2005

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, Paul Koning wrote:

> Tom> In this example, Turing wrote a world-changing paper in 1938, on
> Tom> an obscure problem in mathematics that -- unbeknownst quite at
> Tom> the time -- turned the world on it's head. The publication was
> Tom> obscure. This is a rare event. It's not any issue of any pub,
> Tom> it's the one Turing's paper was in.
>
> Sure, but it's still a magazine. Presumably printed in the typical
> small runs of academic journals, but still, unlikely to be unique. If
> it were the manuscript, I'd believe the estimate. For that matter,
> I'd believe the price they put on Jacquard's paper, for that reason.
> But for 20th century printed stuff, 3 figures seems more plausible.

Oh, I agree it's grossly overpriced (but as Sellam says, we'll
see!). Seeing how 1% of the U.S. owned about 80% of the cash now,
maybe 15 kilobucks for an old yellowed journal is like dropping
$10 at a bar.

On availability, "probably" doesn't count. I agree there
"probably" are other copies of that issue, but I doubt any are
around. I bet however if someone does have one, and this one sells
for $$$$, others will appear!

(This happened precisely to Nixie tubes; they seemed fairly rare
10 years ago, but there's a lot of trade in them now, and turns
out some people had thousands of units in a warehouse somewhere,
but never bothered to ferret them out until they did the math. Not
that I think many copies would show up, in this instance [heading off
a pointless dead-end thread here :-) ])
Received on Wed Feb 16 2005 - 13:55:38 GMT