Each circle represents an item from an auction, placed according to category and ascending asking price with increasing distance from the center (the most expensive item forms the center). Circle size corresponds to the ratio of asking vs final price. Mouseover the circles to see the author and in brackets the catalogue number as well as the asking and the final price. Transparent circles represent unsold items. Catalogues may still be available from here, I didn't want to put them up on this site (copyright issues, somebody might check up on the data and find errors, etc.).

Inspired by an article in "Die Zeit" about an auction on Oct 22/23, 2011 of about 1,000 manuscripts in Basel, Switzerland by Moirandat. Various handwritten stuff by influental persons was for sale, and I got interested in how much people would pay for them. Is Wagner more worth than Edit Piaf? Einstein more than Karl Marx? Paul Klee or Marcel Proust? Can we say something about the relative importance or even decide epic battles like Freud vs. Jung or Goethe vs. Schiller[*]?

I removed the most expensive piece for scaling: The final handwritten draft of "Ode an die Freude" by Schiller which had an asking price of CHF 150,000 (it went for 500,000).

Unforunately, it's not that simple. A love letter by Flaubert will be more expensive (CHF 7,500) than a simple line scribbled on a postcard by Rilke (CHF 600). Even worse, a most mondane letter (OMG there was a fire in the city! And I saw it from far, far away!!!) by some aristocrat engaged to some acquaintance of Goethe costs CHF 1,200, as does a letter by Heisenberg to another physicist about him meeting Fermi, which puts that aristocrat (I already forgot the name) on the same level as Heisenberg. Disgusting. Of course, age, condition, content and rarity are all factors, not just the writer[*].

[*] More fun stuff: Malewitsch complaining about a cold (his daughter can't keep up with washing his handkerchiefs, his underwear is completely inadequate) costs just as much as Picasso stuck just after the capitulation of France. Go figure.

Resultwise, the clear winner in relative terms is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a french translation of a passage of one of his books, signed, which went for almost ten times the asking price (and if you haven't read Venus in Furs, don't waste any more time here, you haven't lived yet)[*]. The most money was payed (except for the "Ode an die Freude" which ran out of competition IMHO) for a letter by Nietzsche (65,000 Francs with an asking price of 24,000). Kasimir's cold finally left Picasso's trouble during WWII well behind, by the way. And for some reason or other I'm quite content that Thomas Mann went unsold and Heinrich Himmler dropped behind Edith Piaf, as did Novalis behind Marx.

[*] The other big bubble is a letter from Isolde Beidler, daughter of Richard Wagner, to her husband, an unfun fact that doesn't even come close in coolness.

Extracted the calling prices from the catalogue and final result PDFs with some ugly Perl hacking and decided (again) to use a radial visualization - since cheap manuscripts were more numerous than the rare expensive ones (more space on the outside) and expensive (==important?) ones are closer to the center (which is were important stuff resides, normally, doesn't it?). Graphing was done with raphaeljs.com, which provides nice wrapping for interactive SVG graphics including compatibility hacks for older browsers (don't know how well they work).