If you have a spare £12,000 knocking around

[ravells]

Why not buy one of these beautiful globes at the upcoming Bonhams auction?

Go to page 176 in the Catalogue below:

Bonhams 1793 : Gentleman's Library Sale

[drfell]

put me down for 6

they are very lovely and when I win the lottery they will look great in my castle, until then, sigh

[vorropohaiah]

lovely! i always wondered why even new globes are so damned expensive. are they really that difficult to make?

[waldronate]

How It's Made: Globe : Video : Science Channel shows how one manufacturer does it for one line of globes (I think it's been shown here before). Making a single globe is relatively painstaking work. As the globes get larger, the support structure gets harder and the globes have to e made of comparatively tougher stuff.

See also http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...ank-globe.html and http://www.cartographersguild.com/re...rld-globe.html for more information on making globes.

If you'd like a multi-function globe for decorating your home, http://www.amazon.com/Sixteenth-Cent.../dp/B001MA1W8G shows one sort of thing that you can get. I find it amusing that it's approximately cheaper to get the bar than to get a real globe. My family used to have something like one of these back in the late 60's and it was interesting to look at and moderately sturdy.

[Sir Wulf]

That makes me want to make an old-fashioned globe depicting some other world: Barsoom or Dunsany's Lands Beyond the Fields We Know...

[mearrin69]

I have always wanted the globe of Arrakis described in Dune...the one spinning under the impetus of Baron Harkonnen's chubby hand.
M