We have completed another year of auctions, and as we do every year, we like to share with our customers some of the highlights of the past year, both personally and professionally. Although Old World Auctions is our “baby,” we have two even more important babies in our lives, and those babies keep on growing up and doing amazing things. Our eldest accepted an offer to attend the University of Maryland at College Park and began school in the fall. He is already a Terrapin through and through, and we are selfishly happy that he is only a short drive away. Our youngest is still in high school and she has just started learning to drive, so watch out if you are driving in the Richmond area! Family dinners are a little smaller now and we cherish every minute we get to spend with our kids.
We had the good fortune to do some traveling this year. We headed out west to ski and snowboard in Utah and experienced some epic powder. We also went the opposite direction for a beach trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina over the summer. And this fall, for the first time since before the pandemic, we had the opportunity to exhibit at two map fairs. The first was in Chicago, Illinois at the Newberry Library Nebenzahl Lecture Series, and the second was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts map seminar. At both events we were able to reconnect with customers we hadn’t seen in years, and met quite a few new faces. We always enjoy having these face-to-face interactions and getting to know our customers. We also had a number of customers visit us at our office in Richmond, and we hope you will stop by if you are ever in town.
Now that most of the packages from our latest auction have been shipped, we have shifted our attention to our annual review of the business. We presented 5 auctions in 2025 and continued our focus on bringing in higher quality material. This resulted in less material in 2025 than in 2024, however, our total low estimate remained relatively flat (up by 1%). Our focus on quality material drove stronger hammer prices, which grew on average from $408 in 2024 to $430 in 2025, a 5% increase. This is in addition to an 8% increase from the previous year.
In 2025, we also saw slight growth in our sell-through, which is calculated as the percent of items that sold at auction. Our sell-through remains above the industry average of 75.6% as reported by Rare Book Hub, which aggregates auction results from the rare, antiquarian and collectible market globally.
Trends in Cartography
The geographic mix of material in our auctions remained fairly steady from 2024 to 2025. However, we were able to source more North American material, which is a category that we had been seeking to grow due to its strong performance in prior years. We also received more European material and less African material. While European maps have not been one of the better selling categories in recent years, we shifted towards more Eastern European maps, which tend to perform well with our customers.
We find that most of our customers have collections based on a specific state, region or country, and we group our material accordingly into 40 categories, primarily based on geography. These categories include the world, each of the continents, regional maps within each continent, polar maps, the oceans, prints, atlases, reference books, historical documents, etc. Because our auction house is based in the United States, we typically find that maps of the western hemisphere, North America, and United States are our best-selling categories, and 2025 continued that trend. Conversely, maps of regions and cities within Europe, Africa, Asia and South America performed on the lower end this year based on sell-through rates. Interestingly, when you compare the sell-through rates for our top and bottom categories between 2024 and 2025, the sell-through rates in 2025 all shifted closer to the OWA average of 77.7%. While the bottom categories generally improved compared with 2024, the top categories declined slightly. Overall, we saw fewer wild swings in performance this year, which means that our mix of material more closely matched our customers’ interests.
Trends by Century
In addition to ensuring that we have a wide representation of geographic locations within our auction material, we also strive to have a good selection of maps from various time periods. The mix of maps by century remained essential unchanged from 2024 to 2025. And just like last year, 20th century maps continued to be the most popular, as more and more collectors are discovering the fascinating range of material available from the last century. At the other end of the spectrum, it is worthy to note that our sell-through rate of 16th century material increased from 73% in 2024 to 81% in 2025. In the future we will work on sourcing more of the “oldest” and “youngest” maps to meet our customers’ interests.
Top Selling Items
For the seventh year in a row, the majority of our top selling maps (7 out of 10) were focused on the United States. Interestingly, four were related to transportation activities (planes, trains and automobiles!), while the remaining three U.S. maps include the Potomac River near Washington DC, central Colorado featuring Aspen, and a futuristic map of the United States. The other three maps in the top 10 were all European, including a chart of Western Europe, an early map of the Baltic, and a small map depicting the Siege of Paris. Not surprisingly, the time periods for these top 10 items were concentrated into two groups - early and late. All seven U.S. maps were published in the 20th century, while the European maps were issued prior to 1650. The full listing, determined as a percentage of the high estimate, includes:
1. Auction 203 - Lot 225. The Over-Sea Railroad, by Florida East Coast Railway, 1915. Sold for $1,700 -- 680% above the high estimate 2. Auction 206 - Lot 216. Roaring Fork Valley, by Fritz, 1960. Sold for $600 -- 667% above the high estimate 3. Auction 204 - Lot 406. Tabula Transeundi Maris Orientalis, Septentrionalis, et Occidentalis, by Matthaus Merian, 1644. Sold for $2,100 -- 560% above the high estimate 4. Auction 202 - Lot 116. TIB Automobile Road Map of the United States…, by Touring Information Bureau of America, 1914. Sold for $1,400 -- 467% above the high estimate 5. Auction 205 - Lot 398. Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae Livoniae et Moscoviae Descriptio, by Maciej Strubicz, 1589. Sold for $3,500 -- 412% above the high estimate 6. Auction 206 - Lot 134. Automobile Tours Pocket Edition Covering Approximately 50,000 Miles and Over 5,000 Towns in the U.S., by Autoguide Publishing Company, 1924. Sold for $700 -- 389% above the high estimate 7. Auction 202 - Lot 117. Aviation Map of United States Featuring Landing Fields [in] The Complete Camp Site Guide…, by Rand McNally & Co., 1923. Sold for $1,200 -- 369% above the high estimate 8. Auction 202 - Lot 157. An Historical Map of the Tidewater Potomac Washington, D.C. to Indian Head, Md., by Frederick Tilp, 1946. Sold for $350 -- 350% above the high estimate 9. Auction 203 - Lot 127. The Future Map of North America, by Gordon-Michael Scallion, 1997. Sold for $550 -- 324% above the high estimate 10. Auction 206 - Lot 470. Warhaftige Deschription und Beschreibung der Stadt Paris…, by Frans Hogenberg, 1600. Sold for $550 -- 306% above the high estimate
Looking strictly at our highest-dollar performers reveals a wider mix of material, including a lovely example of Speed’s two-part atlas of the world and Great Britain. Also in the top 5 are two rare maps by Cornelis de Jode featuring an early North America and a world map in polar projections. Rounding out the top 5 of high-dollar performers are Waldseemuller’s "Admiral's Map" and a rare double-hemisphere world map published for the first edition of Linschoten's Itinerario.
1. Auction 202 - Lot 746. The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine [bound with] A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, by John Speed, 1676. Sold for $50,000 2. Auction 205 - Lot 40. Hemispheriu ab Aequinoctiali Linea, ad Circulu Poli Arctici…, by Cornelis de Jode, 1593. Sold for $25,000 3. Auction 205 - Lot 62. Tabula Terre Nove, by Martin Waldseemuller, 1513. Sold for $25,000 4. Auction 206 - Lot 75. Americae Pars Borealis, Florida, Baccalaos, Canada, Corterealis, by Cornelis de Jode, 1593. Sold for $25,000 5. Auction 205 - Lot 6. Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio ex Peritissimorum Totius Orbis Gaeographorum Operibus Desumta, by Plancius/Vrients, 1596. Sold for $20,000
Our Bidders
One of the most important parts of an auction business is bidder participation, and our overall participation looked similar between 2024 and 2025. This year, 16% of bidders were brand new to OWA, while over 60% have been bidding with us for over 5 years. Within this latter group, we had 25 customers bid in 2025 who have been participating in our auctions for over 25 years! We both appreciate and take great pride in the fact that our customers keep coming back to our auctions.
Despite some complexities in the global economy this year, we continue to reach a wide international audience with bidders participating from 51 countries. The countries are represented by most of the letters of the alphabet, from Austria, Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark and Estonia to Romania, South Africa, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. While the majority of our customers live in the United States, the top 5 countries outside of the US that are represented are Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and Spain. We thoroughly enjoy getting to work with wonderful people from all corners of the globe – it is one of the highlights of our job!
Percent of Bidders by Continent
The Year Ahead
It seems that each year the global landscape presents new and different challenges, but we hope our auctions provide consistency, interesting content, and entertainment in an unpredictable world. We are excited about the material we have for our upcoming auctions and are continuously working to secure unique and rare pieces.
We are still accepting consignments for our upcoming auctions, and you can view our instructions for submitting consignments here. We have revised our commission structure to offer lower seller fees on higher-value items and have highly competitive consignment terms compared with other auction houses. For our international consignors concerned about tariffs, we are happy to announce that maps are tariff-free under the current policies and we can advise you on the correct way to declare your shipment to avoid customs issues.
We are particularly looking for consignments in the following categories:
Maps of the western hemisphere and North America
Maps of the United States, especially regional maps of the South and west of the Mississippi River, as well as the states of California, Florida, Hawaii, Texas and Virginia.
Atlases before 1850
16th century maps
20th century pictorial maps
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), considering an exploration around the globe.
