University of Virginia Library

Sometimes a dealer seems to have raised a bid for stock largely to maintain the prestige of the item's established value, but this is not manipulation.

One or two others may have participated, but these six are certain. These six were among the leading antiquarian dealers of the day: Thorpe was later to become Britwell Librarian; Payne and Foss built and catalogued the great Grenville Collection; Pickering was the famous publisher of reprints who was also the publisher of Lowndes and publisher toe the British Museum. Henry Stevens tells briefly how this same William Pickering spoiled the plans of a similar "Ring" at Lord Mountnorris's Sale in 1852 (Recollections of Mr. James Lenox, 1886, pp. 167-170).

Perhaps in New York the various dealers, who are a friendly and gossipy group, are more likely to decline to buy extensively for stock at a particular auction because of widespread disapproval of the consignor's standards of condition and collecting methods.