Along with being one of the greatest card magicians in history, Ricky Jay, who died in 2018, was an esteemed collector of books and ephemera documenting the history of magic, hokum, and strange exhibitions. If you enjoyed Jay's books like Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, Jay's Journal of Anomalies, and Extraordinary Exhibitions, now is your chance to own the original items that were reproduced in those pages. On October 17-28, Sotheby's is hosting an auction of "The Amazing Collection of Ricky Jay." From Sotheby's:
Magician, actor, scholar, author: the range of Ricky Jay's accomplishments were as varied as are the formats and subjects of the material in his celebrated Collection: books, pamphlets, posters, handbills, broadsides, prints, ephemera, objects, and apparatus documenting the histories of magic, circuses, jugglers and acrobats, automatons, remarkable characters, learned animals, limb-deficient artists, con men, and scores of other related, if arcane, topics […]
Highlights from The Ricky Jay Collection include a stunning compilation of more than 460 prints of "Remarkable Characters" and a poster commemorating Houdini in Russia, which took place at Moscow's Butyrka prison during his 1903 travels through Russia. At once delightful and shocking, Ricky Jay's singular collection shines a light on a world of shadows. It is a miraculous and exacting tour through the history of the unusual and how it has captivated and inspired us for centuries.