1810 & 1889 Pike's Explorations Books
GUEST: I brought two Zebulon Pike Expedition journals.
APPRAISER: You have a couple of editions here of the book. And, uh, the first one is a copy of the sources of the Mississippi expeditions and then also the Mexican regions. It was done in 1810, Philadelphia. Now, Pike went out very much the same time that Lewis and Clark went out. Essentially, the United States wanted to see what was out here.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Lewis and Clark were supposed to go out and find if there was a route to the northwest. Pike was supposed to find out, first of all, what type of economic activity was going on. He was supposed to also try to make friends with the American Indian tribes that were there. He was also supposed to kick the British out.
GUEST: (chuckles) But that was the first trip, and then he got back, and they immediately wanted to send him out to the second part of this, which was to go through New Mexico and north to explore and sort of set the mapping out and ultimately, probably, to drive the Spanish out of the west and make it American territory. One of the things that he did-- and this is a printing a number of years later. This is a copy of the 1811 edition. This is an 1880s edition. But one of the main things that he was trying to do in these expeditions was map the areas, (chuckling) because there weren't any maps.
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: And so when he got out to Colorado, they went a little too far into Spanish territory. The Spanish captured him and his whole crew. They actually treated them very nicely. He had all his papers, all his maps.
GUEST: Oh…
APPRAISER: He had all the records. They didn't give those back to him.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: So one of the reasons that these are very important is when he did the original copy in 1810, he had to do it from memory.
GUEST: Oh, gosh.
APPRAISER: So the books we have here, they're very, very nice. Now, the 1810 book, one of the things when you're doing and collecting books that you have to be very careful of, and it's very important, is the maps I showed you in this edition.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: If you look closely in this book, they're not there.
GUEST: Oh...
APPRAISER: So even with the maps missing in this edition, retail, it's probably worth $1,000 in that range. Now, this edition is a very collectible edition because it's one that was well done. This edition would probably sell for $1,500, maybe a little bit more. Unfortunately, this edition, if it had the maps, is $10,000 to $15,000.
GUEST: Hm... See, we didn't, I'm sure, even realize that it had loose maps that should have been with the book.
APPRAISER: Well, it actually wasn't loose maps. The maps were put in.
GUEST: Oh, and they've been taken out.
APPRAISER: The maps, a lot of times people take out and they frame them.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: Can be more valuable than the books and the printings. But it's still a great book.
$2,500 Retail
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