(Bloomberg) -- An online auction of the contents of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's personal library soared 3,900% over estimate to total $2.4 million at Bonhams on Thursday, testifying to the cult of personality that surrounds the late U.S. Supreme Court justice.
“We had over a thousand registrants for the auction,” says Catherine Williamson, director of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams, who was in charge of the sale. “In a normal books and manuscripts sale, you get 200.” The sale was “white glove,” meaning every single lot sold.
Bidders, Williamson says, were primarily based in the U.S., though a handful of bids came from places as far-flung as Hong Kong. Women comprised a much higher percentage of bidders than usual, and the age range skewed younger than the norm.
“Usually my buyers are born in the 1930s, '40s, '50s,” Williamson says. “And these people were born in the 1960s or later, some in the 1990s.”
Runaway Success
Because the 1,000 or so books in the sale were estimated primarily on their worth as used books rather than their value as collectibles, the auction's overall estimate of $60,000 was always considered conservative.
Even so, many of the lots skyrocketed past even the most optimistic prognostications.
Ginsburg's annotated copy of the 1957-1958 Harvard Law Review sold for around $100,000, well over its high estimate of $3,500. Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag's book Women was estimated at $700; it sold for nearly $38,000. A signed copy of Toni Morrison's Beloved sold for about $31,600, over a high estimate of $500. And perhaps most impressive of all, Gloria Steinem's memoir, inscribed to Ginsburg, sold for more than $52,800; it too was estimated at just $500. (Totals include premiums, the fees that auction houses stick onto the price after the hammer falls; estimates don't.)
“I thought that the law school textbooks, which are the first few lots, would probably do well, because those are very much the classic piece of intellectual memorabilia,” Williamson says. “So I thought—these are neat, these will sell for a lot of money.” But the Steinem book, she continues, “has far exceeded anyone's expectations. But it's a pretty cool thing to have.”
It wasn't just signed copies that did well. One lot that contained 10 books on legal writing, grammar, and style sold for $15,300, above a high estimate of $600. Another lot that comprised three books on etiquette sold for $6,375 over a high estimate of $250.
Unproven Market
The sale was such a surprise, Williamson explains, “because she's an unproven market. None of her stuff has come to auction before.”
This auction, then, could be seen as one of the first tests of Ginsburg's staying power in the cultural imagination.
“When a famous person dies and we can bring out a critical mass of property, and people see it for the first time, that's when the market tells you what the value really is,” she says. “Before that you can guess—the IRS wants you to guess!—but you don't really know until that moment.”
The market, Williamson concludes, hasn't as much spoken as shouted.
“Usually when we celebrate the life of a public intellectual, the fan base is committed, but it's small,” she says. “But here was a wide community of people who revered this woman.”
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