31 Old Celestial Globes and Planispheres Selling Faster Than You’d Expect

A celestial globe maps the sky as if you were looking at it from the outside, with the constellations printed on the sphere in reverse. For centuries they sat in libraries next to a matching terrestrial globe, half science and half status symbol.

The star charts and rotating planispheres that did the same job for less money have their own following now, and the prices below move faster than most people expect once a genuine early example surfaces.

Vincenzo Coronelli Library Celestial Globe

Coronelli’s large Venetian globes of the 1690s are the aristocrats of the field, with complete examples running from roughly $30,000 into six figures and matched pairs topping that. Flaking varnish, losses to the printed gores, or a replaced stand cut the figure sharply.

The maker was a Franciscan friar who also built two 15-foot globes for Louis XIV, and he sold his printed gores loose so buyers could mount them themselves.

Coronelli Engraved Celestial Gores

The same Coronelli sky, dated 1700, also survives as flat printed sheets that were never assembled into a sphere. An unmounted set runs roughly $3,000 to $20,000, with toning, foxing, and any trimming to the platemarks driving the spread.

Both Bonhams and Sotheby’s have sold these as loose sheets, which makes them, in effect, a three-hundred-year-old globe kit that nobody ever got around to building.

Willem Janszoon Blaeu Celestial Globe

Blaeu’s seventeenth-century Amsterdam globes are museum-grade, with complete examples running into the tens of thousands and beyond, entirely dependent on original varnish, an absence of cracking, and a period stand. The detail collectors care about is the source data: Blaeu studied under the astronomer Tycho Brahe and plotted his stars directly from Tycho’s own observations, which is why the Met holds an example.

James Wilson and Sons Celestial Globe

Wilson was the first commercial globe maker in the United States, and his 13-inch celestial globes from the 1810s to 1830s run roughly $5,000 to $15,000 as singles, with a matched terrestrial-and-celestial pair once realizing $22,500. The condition of the paper and stand is decisive.

The surprise is the man himself: a self-taught Vermont farmer and blacksmith who taught himself copperplate engraving specifically to make them.

J. and W. Cary Table Globe

The Cary firm set the English standard, and its table globes of about 1800 to the 1830s run roughly $3,000 to $12,000, with larger library celestials higher and varnish crazing or cartouche wear pulling prices down. Cary reissued its globes repeatedly to add newly discovered constellations and updated star magnitudes, so two globes from the same shop can carry noticeably different skies depending on the year they left it.

Cary Pocket Globe With Celestial Case

Cary also made three-inch pocket globes of the late eighteenth century, roughly $1,500 to $5,000, where the survival of the fragile shagreen case is a major value factor. The clever part is that the two inner halves of the case are themselves printed with the celestial sphere, so the little box that protects the terrestrial globe doubles as the star map.

Condition of that case is everything.

Newton and Son Celestial Table Globe

The London firm of Newton and Son held a royal warrant and made mid-nineteenth-century celestial table globes now worth roughly $2,000 to $8,000, with overpainting and an unsteady axis lowering value. The useful quirk for collectors is that the firm stamped its successive shop addresses onto the globes, which lets an example be dated to within a few years simply by reading where the Newtons were trading at the time.

Thomas Malby and Son Celestial Globe

Malby produced celestial globes from its Holborn premises in the 1860s, now worth roughly $2,000 to $9,000, with cracking and a replaced stand pulling the range down. The firm made globes for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a mass-education publisher, which places Malby squarely in the Victorian push to put serious astronomy into ordinary schoolrooms rather than only aristocratic libraries.

W. and T.M. Bardin Celestial Globe

Bardin’s “New British” celestial globes of about 1800 became the pattern that later English makers openly copied, and genuine examples run roughly $3,000 to $12,000, with original horizon-ring papers and intact varnish setting the price. Being the design everyone imitated is exactly what gives a real Bardin its standing: buyers are paying for the source of a style, not one of the many later echoes of it.

Gilman Joslin Celestial Globe

Boston’s Gilman Joslin made twelve-inch celestial table globes in the 1860s and 1870s, roughly $1,500 to $5,000, with sixteen-inch floor models higher and paper losses or stand damage decisive. Joslin did not engrave fresh plates but inherited the Loring and Wilson American gore lineage, so his globes carry forward the earliest American star mapping, one workshop passing the printed sky to the next across several decades.

Delamarche Celestial Globe

The Paris firm of Delamarche made early-to-mid nineteenth-century celestial globes now worth roughly $1,500 to $6,000, where clean examples command a premium because French varnish of the period tends to darken with age. Delamarche took over the globe business of the earlier Robert de Vaugondy dynasty, so buying one means buying into one of the longest continuous lines of French globe making, complete with its characteristic aging varnish.

W. and A.K. Johnston Celestial Floor Globe

The Edinburgh firm styled itself “Geographers to the Queen,” and its 18-inch celestial floor globe published in 1879 runs roughly $3,000 to $10,000, with the condition of the oak stand and any gore flaking driving value. Johnston dated its celestial gores to a specific astronomical epoch, a precision that matters because the position of the stars shifts slowly over time, so the printed date fixes exactly which sky you are looking at.

Weber Costello Celestial Globe

Chicago Heights maker Weber Costello made star globes in the 1930s that now run roughly $150 to $600, with Art Deco metal bases and an intact finish raising the figure. The firm is better known for its black-ocean “Peerless” terrestrial globes, which makes the celestial version the quieter collectible from the same catalog, and a clean printed surface on the affordable end of this list is exactly what keeps them moving.

Replogle Starlight Celestial Globe

The mid-century Replogle “Starlight” globe used a dark ground so the constellations appear the way they do against a night sky, and it runs a modest roughly $40 to $150, with scratches to the printed black surface and base wear lowering it. This is the accessible entry point to celestial-globe collecting, a piece that turns up in ordinary house clearances and still sells quickly precisely because it costs so little.

Columbus Verlag Celestial Globe

The German firm Columbus made celestial globes from the 1930s through the 1960s, roughly $150 to $600, with illuminated “Duplex” versions and working internal lighting affecting price. Columbus is still an operating manufacturer, which makes mid-century examples relatively obtainable, and the lit versions are the ones to watch: a globe that glows from within to reveal the constellations is a genuinely different object from a plain printed sphere.

Charles Dien Celestial Globe

The nineteenth-century Paris maker Charles Dien was himself a working astronomer, and his celestial globes run roughly $1,500 to $6,000, with presentation examples and clean varnish raising value. Some surviving globes carry hand-inked dedications to named recipients, which is an unusually personal detail for an instrument like this, turning a mass-produced scientific object into something closer to a signed gift with a traceable history.

Franklin Celestial Globe by H.B. Nims

Produced in Troy, New York in the 1880s by H.B. Nims and Company, the “Franklin” celestial globe runs roughly $800 to $3,000, with paper losses and stand damage lowering the figure. These came from the successors to the Merriam and Moore school-globe operation and were aimed squarely at American classrooms, which is why they survive in reasonable numbers and appeal to buyers who want a genuine period globe without a five-figure price.

Charles Smith and Son Celestial Globe

The London firm of Charles Smith and Son made celestial globes in the 1830s and 1840s, roughly $2,000 to $8,000, where survival in the original fitted case commands a strong premium. Smith’s smaller celestials were sold in shaped cases that doubled as display stands, so an intact example arrives with its own purpose-built housing, and that housing is often the single detail that separates an ordinary sale from an exceptional one.

Nathaniel Hill Pocket Globe

Dated 1754, Nathaniel Hill’s tiny London pocket globe runs roughly $4,000 to $12,000, with case integrity and unfaded gores decisive. Hill worked at premises styled “the Sign of the Globe and the Sun,” and the interior of the fish-skin case is printed with the two celestial hemispheres.

A dated eighteenth-century pocket globe with its star map intact inside the lid is about as compact as serious astronomical collecting gets.

George Adams-Era Armillary Sphere

An antique armillary sphere maps the heavens with a nest of rings rather than a printed surface, and English or French examples from the eighteenth century run roughly $3,000 into the tens of thousands. Signed instrument-maker pieces in brass far outrun later decorative copies, with completeness of the rings the key factor.

George Adams, associated with the finest examples, was official instrument maker to King George III.

Islamic Engraved Brass Celestial Globe

Traditional Islamic and Persian celestial globes, engraved in brass and often dated and signed, run roughly $5,000 into the tens of thousands and higher for early examples, with corrosion and inlay losses cutting value. The astonishing part is the making: these were cast as a single seamless hollow sphere using the lost-wax method, then engraved by hand with the classical 1,025 stars, a technique European makers never matched.

Joseph Schedler Celestial Globe

The German immigrant Joseph Schedler made celestial globes in New York and Jersey City in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, now roughly $500 to $2,500, with flaking varnish and losses to the paper gores on the plaster sphere heavily affecting value. Schedler sold his globes packaged with his own printed instructional guidebook for American schools, so a complete example ideally arrives with the little manual that told teachers how to use it.

Denoyer-Geppert Celestial Classroom Globe

The Chicago firm Denoyer-Geppert made a sixteen-inch celestial table globe around 1956, now worth roughly $150 to $500, with scuffing to the printed sphere and a wobbly pedestal lowering the figure. The date is the story: this large classroom globe was issued in 1956, the year before Sputnik launched, catching American schools right at the moment public fascination with the sky was about to change completely.

Kelvin Hughes “Husun” Star Globe

The seven-inch “Husun” nautical star globe, made by H. Hughes and Son in London from the 1920s through the 1970s, runs roughly $300 to $1,200, with brass-mounted boxed examples at the top and a bare sphere far lower. “Husun” is simply a contraction of “Hughes and Son,” and navigators used it to preselect which stars to shoot at twilight, planning their sightings in advance rather than hunting for stars in a darkening sky.

Barritt-Serviss Star and Planet Finder

This New York planisphere, produced from 1906 into the 1930s, runs roughly $40 to $300 loose, but a boxed, complete example with its manual and planet disks has been offered around $900, so completeness dominates. It was co-created by the newspaper cartoonist-astronomer Leon Barritt and the science popularizer Garrett Serviss, and it was marketed with the irresistible promise of showing “The Heavens Without a Telescope.”

Philip’s Planisphere

George Philip and Son’s rotating star card has been published in London for well over a century, and while ordinary copies run roughly $30 to $150, early gilt-morocco deluxe versions from around 1905 fetch more, provided the rotating disk still turns freely. Because it has been printed continuously for so long, dating an example depends on the printed star epoch rather than the design, which has barely changed in generations.

Miller Planisphere

The American Miller Planisphere of the later twentieth century runs a modest roughly $10 to $30, with latitude-specific versions and an intact protective sleeve mattering most. The catch that trips up casual buyers is latitude: each version is printed for a fixed band of the globe, so the “wrong” latitude edition shows a sky that does not quite match what an observer actually sees, and that mismatch lowers its usefulness and value.

David Chandler “The Night Sky” Planisphere

Chandler’s planisphere, made from the 1980s onward, runs roughly $10 to $25, with earlier editions and an unwarped plastic disk holding value best. Its design splits the sky into two half-views specifically to correct the horizon distortion that plagues single-disk planispheres, a genuine improvement that made it a favorite among amateur astronomers who found the older rotating cards stretched the stars near the edges out of shape.

Edmund Scientific Star and Satellite Path Finder

Introduced around 1957 by the New Jersey firm Edmund Scientific, this planisphere runs roughly $15 to $50, sitting at the top of that range only when complete with its instruction card and a clean disk. The timing explains the unusual name: it appeared in the immediate wake of Sputnik and was designed specifically to help amateurs track the paths of the first artificial satellites crossing the night sky.

Rude Star Finder 2102-D

The Rude Star Finder is a flat white disk fitted with interchangeable pin-in star templates, and complete sets with all the latitude templates and the original case run roughly $40 to $150. It is named for its inventor, G.T. Rude of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the design has proven so practical that it is still issued to mariners today, which keeps a steady demand under even the older examples.

Rand McNally Celestial Globe and Star Finder

Rand McNally’s early-to-mid twentieth-century celestial globe runs roughly $100 to $400, with paper losses and a damaged meridian or horizon ring reducing value. The clever feature is integration: the metal horizon ring doubles as a working star finder, so the globe itself becomes the locating device rather than relying on a separate card, folding two instruments that usually sit side by side into a single object.

Why the Old Sky Still Sells

The stars printed on these globes are, in a real sense, out of date. The constellations have drifted, the epochs are old, and a modern phone app will find any object faster than a rotating disk ever could.

None of that has dented the demand, because what buyers want is not accuracy but the object itself, the sky rendered by hand in an age when mapping it was hard.

That is why a Coronelli sheet and a two-dollar plastic planisphere can sit on the same list without contradiction. Both are attempts to hold the heavens still long enough to study them, and both find buyers quickly, because the impulse behind them, to pin down the one thing everyone can see and nobody can reach, has never really gone out of fashion.

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