Wizard of Oz Book sells for $152,000 at auction in 2002

April 1997, Christie’s pioneered the first single-owner sale of Beatrix Potter material in America, with the Doris Frohnsdorff Collection. The sale set numerous auction records for Potter’s printed works and illustrations while establishing new collectors in this field. This success was followed up in 1998 with a single sale devoted to Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Included was an extraordinary copy of the exceedingly rare 1865 first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which sold for $1.54 million, setting the current world-record price for any children’s book sold at auction. Numerous world-record auction prices have been set on individual authors/illustrators in this category, including: a drawing by Ernest Shepard ($113,400 in 1999), a work by Mark Twain (a presentation copy of Huckleberry Finn, which sold for $265,100 in 2004) and a work by L. Frank Baum (a presentation copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which sold for $152,500 in 2002). Christie’s also holds sales of children’s book illustrations at auction rooms in South Kensington on a regular basis.