Auctioneers & Appraisers
PBA Galleries, originally Pacific Book Auction Galleries, is an American auction house that has a long tradition of rare and collectible book auctions since 1955. It is now located in the Bay area, in Berkeley, California, after several relocations and some turbulent turning points. Today it has an international presence via the online auctions, but keeping the tradition performing in house auctions every second Thursday.
One of their services is that they hold open appraisal events once a month, where everyone can attend without an appointment, to get oral estimates of their valuable books and relevant items. PBA Galleries is one of the few ‘pure’ book auction houses concentrated in the offering of rare and collectible books, manuscripts, autographs, paper ephemera, maps, photographs and other related items.
PBA Galleries roots lie with Maurice Powers who founded the California Book Auction Galleries in 1955, located at 139 Townsend Street, San Francisco, California. After Maurice Powers passed away in 1990, the company was placed in voluntary bankruptcy by his heirs.
The former employees of California Book Auction Galleries, including Bruce MacMakin, in 1992 founded Pacific Book Auction Galleries located at the old premises of the auction house. In 1996 the auction house relocated to the center of San Francisco, at 133 Kearny Street.
In 2013 the auction house was purchased by the current owner and booklover Sharon Gee. After continued growth the auction house moved in 2019, to 1233 Sutter Street, San Francisco, and finally to its current location at 605 Addison Street in Berkeley.
In this ‘Review’ section we have gathered compact background information of auction houses which either repeatedly or occasionally present rare and collectible book related lots at auctions. Although auction houses tend to stick on their usual subcategories of items, you can find many surprising lots not otherwise expected from a particular auction house. As a result these items have much less competition and could well be a buying opportunity.
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