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Antique maps provide a fascinating insight into how the planet was once perceived and have great investment potential, too, as the experts from this rarefied world can verify.

We may not use them to chart new lands or avoid threatening sea monsters these days, but we’re unknowingly exposed to an increasing number of maps. We constantly note our location on our phones, in our cars and via social media. At the same time, we are also deluged with map-based infographics that chart everything from global obesity to broadband coverage.

(CNN) – Maps can be beautiful and good ones can be great investments.

When looking through old books, it is a good idea to pay attention and know something of cartography. In the case of Daniel Crouch, a book dealer in England, he was both attentive and knowledgeable when he found a handful of rare maps of Texas drawn by scientist Jean Louis Berlandier in the early 1800s. The maps depict the Texas Gulf Coast, specifically Brazos Santiago, a town destroyed by hurricanes in the area near Galveston Bay. This was well before any urban development and about five years before the Allen Brothers hoodwinked a bunch of people into settling in Houston.

Mapping Empire and Exploration in America, London Dealer Daniel Crouch Rare Books brings rare American maps to the International Art and Antique Dealer’s Fair, New York.

This year at the International fair, Daniel will exhibit four ink and watercolour wash manuscript maps of the site of Houston before its foundation, dated 1829-30, printed by Jean Louis Berlandiers, an anthropologist, geographer, historian, meteorologist and naturalist. Each map shows a separate section of the Texas coast, from Galveston Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande, and they are for sale as a group priced at £250,000.

London: Fourteen pre-eminent British art and antique dealers will cross the pond with a veritable treasure chest of paintings, jewelry, rare maps, sculpture and furniture – all for the purpose of enticing buyers attending the 25th edition of the International Art and Antique Dealers Show, the 7-day extravaganza that opens on October 25.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books will present the first four Chicago Wage Maps from the Hull House Maps and Papers series first published in 1895 ($25,000) at the inaugural Chicago International Map Fair, on September 28+29, at the Primitive Gallery, 130 North Jefferson Street, it was announced by Daniel Crouch.

This rare map, dated 1889, showing the distribution of Jews living in East London has just gone on display in the capital.

An exhibition of rare and antique maps charts the changing appearance and socio-political climate of London, from the original tube plan to where the city’s rich-list live.

London-lovers will be in for a treat as a new exhibition is set to display maps of the capital dating from 1572 and through the centuries up to the present day.

A guide to rare maps.