A large maritime-themed advertising sign featuring the passenger liner Capetown Castle sold for £22,000 at bottles and advertising specialists BBR Auctions on July 6. The sale, part of the Summer National collecting event in Elsecar, near Barnsley, featured some of the best finds in this burgeoning collecting hobby.

The latest Homes & Interiors sale at Sworders included an extraordinary and highly personal relic from the Waterloo battlefield: a silver-mounted inkwell made from the ear of a war horse.

Back in July 2019, Lawrences in Crewkerne set a new high for a Mouseman carving when a pair of elephant bookends by master carver Stan Dodds (1928-2012) sold at £10,000.

Battle saleroom Burstow & Hewett (20% buyer’s premium) recently sold the ‘contents of a Sussex manor house’ – the lifetime collection of a local antiques collector and dealer.

On July 23 London-based specialist coin and medal auction house Morton & Eden is offering a complete set of 56 Umayyad gold dinars dating from years 77 to 132 in the Hijra calendar (696-750AD).

This stoneware pond by Robert Wallace Martin, measuring 6ft 6in (2m) across, comprises 40 architectural elements, each incised with fish and aquatic creatures among water weeds.

This image of Paramaribo on the banks of the Suriname River is one of the 18 lithographic views of the Dutch West Indies after Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest (1828-94).

A recent sale of Modern Art & Design at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford included a local collection of 21 pots by John Ward (1938-2023).

A rare poster heralding the birth of the British punk movement hammered for a massive £43,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) at Omega Auctions on July 1.

Still bearing the physical scars of battle, a monumental Union Jack flown by HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar led Christie’s Exceptional Sale in London.

A fine example of the Libertas Americana silver medal is estimated to fetch between £50,000-80,000 at Anderson & Garland’s Fine Silver and Objects of Vertu auction in Newcastle on July 22.

A rarity at a recent Woolley & Wallis (26% buyer’s premium) ceramics and glass sale was a late 18th century Wedgwood basalt intaglio seal, featuring a profile portrait of the notorious American spy Captain Nathan Hale (1755-76) beside the reversed inscription 'My Country!!!'.

Footballers were among the very first of the Britains hollowcast lead ‘civilian’ figures.

Among the great Beilby discoveries of recent times was the emergence - from two separate sources across 14 years - of six small firing glasses decorated in red, yellow and white enamel with Masonic emblems.

Ceramics expert’s collection sold at auction included notable pieces made on Merseyside but also a Limehouse cup that proved very popular with bidders