Anique Map Market Now on the Map

Earth Times has a piece about how the antiquarian map market has been steadily gaining strength these days.

From the story...

Jason Miklian, owner of Miklian Antiquarian Maps, understands that both casual buyers and seasoned investors are using the opportunity to bolster their collections, particularly for more unique and hard-to-find items. "We are seeing that after prices bottomed out last year, they are beginning to rise again across most categories and genres."

Further, values of many maps have actually increased during the economic slowdown. "Sales of maps originating from non-European or American sources have really taken off over the past couple of years," Miklian said. "In particular, it's been a challenge to keep any maps written in Arabic, Japanese, or Hindi scripts in stock."

Miklian believes that this trend will continue as other regions of the world are beginning to discover an interest in antique maps. "Indian and Chinese customers are by far our biggest new group of customers, and their tastes go beyond the standard European or American mapmakers. Most want local and regional interpretations of history, and these maps can be extremely difficult to locate."



And speaking of maps, will paper maps be around much longer with GPS devices and all? Miller-McCune discusses it, here.

From the piece...

Pity the poor paper map. Once admired for its accuracy, it is now scorned for being less precise than digital maps and hopelessly passé when compared to handheld GPS and satellite navigation systems.

Many government agencies and longtime private sector cartographers have stopped or slowed production of paper maps, including the California State Automobile Association, which produced maps that are the standard of excellence for road maps around the world and closed down its mapmaking division at the end of 2008. The U.S. and Canadian governments have greatly reduced paper map production, as have Rand McNally and Thomas Brothers, which joined forces.

But the rush to online mapping is causing some problems. Studies by the British Cartographic Society show that high-tech maps get the user from Point A to Point B but leave off traditional features such as historical landmarks, government buildings and cultural institutions; this could lead to a loss of cultural and geographic literacy, the august body warns.



And speaking of geographic literacy, Lapham Quarterly maps the evolution of four stories, including Faust (illustrated above) and Pygmalion.