Collectables

A tiny Oxfam shop in Headington, Oxfordshire, was celebrating after a set of 12 books dropped off by an anonymous donor later sold at Bonhams for £13,000 (£16,640 with premium).

A substantial collection of 18th and 19th century Cape silver, made by European silversmiths practising in South Africa, is coming for sale at Strauss & Co in Johannesberg.

Courtesy of Dava Sobel’s 1995 best-seller, the compelling story of a Yorkshire horologist’s struggle to receive a prize for creating a reliable and accurate method for determining longitude at sea is well known.

Two separate lots at the recent books and manuscripts sale held by TW Gaze (26.4% inc VAT) in Diss, Norfolk sold at £20,000.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

An unusual, possibly unique stereo viewer from the last decade of the 19th century attracted numerous bids at Auction Team Breker (21.8% buyer’s premium) in Cologne.

A specialist antiques shop in Southampton, a city rich in maritime heritage, is set to close at the end of August after 50 years of trading.

Since his inception in 1939, Batman, the Caped Crusader, has never really been out of fashion.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Three of the youngest members of Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s prove that a love of antiques and auction house work is alive and well in the next generation

The Bohemian glassmaker Leopold Blaschka’s fascination with marine life began in 1853, when the ship in which he was travelling to the US became becalmed off the Azores.

Changes are afoot in the art and book dealing hub Cecil Court this summer.

The fashion for tea caddies and other boxes in the form of houses or other decorative buildings emerged in the last quarter of the 18th century and continued into the 19th century.