Collectables

A microscope used by Joseph Banks (1743-1820) on Captain Cook’s first Voyage of Discovery (1768-71) is going under the hammer estimated at £30,000-50,000 on November 1.

The sale at The Auction Centre (20% buyer’s premium) in Runcorn, Cheshire, on September 30 included this rare George III Scottish silver member’s badge for The Edinburgh Skating Club – the world’s first figure skating organisation.

Translation was first time a major poem of antiquity appeared in an English language form.

Among the most desirable of all ‘Prattware’ transfer printed wares are the series of very rare and highly decorative advertising plaques produced for firms such as Crosse & Blackwell and Huntley & Palmers.

Bid to £3400, a 1703 first edition of Martin Martin’s Description of the Western Islands of Scotland in a later full calf binding proved the most expensive item in the 250-lot book and ephemera section that opened an October 5-7 auction at Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium).

Often from poor communities and mostly illiterate, men were limited in the ways in which they could plight their troth in 18th and 19th century Wales.

Coin dealer Patrick Deane first became interested in 17th and 18th century trade tokens in 1970 when working at Spink and Son. He sold his first collection of around 1250 pieces in 1984.

An edition of Queen Victoria’s Leaves from the Journal of our Life on the Highlands… took £550 at a Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) sale of September 23.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

An album of 19 carte de visite portrait photographs of Charles Darwin is offered in Reeman Dansie’s Fine Art auction on November 8-9.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including the football from the infamous Argentina v England match coming to auction.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Forty years after he began identifying Victorian rubbish heaps then digging in them, a Kent collector’s faith in the saying ‘where there’s muck there’s glass’ was vindicated when fellow enthusiasts demolished estimates on scores of his old bottles.

Among the eye-catchers at Wendl in Rudolstadt from October 27-29 is an example of the world’s first functioning lighter.

Vienna antiquarian bookseller Michael Steinbach is celebrating 50 years in the business and has produced a catalogue to mark the milestone.

Though the dust jacket featuring one of Pauline Baynes’ illustrations for the book is torn with loss and exhibits a number of patched repairs, a 1950 first edition of 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' did sell for £1100 against a guide of £500-700 on October 6 at Buckinghamshire saleroom Bourne End Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

First and only published volume of South American work appears in London saleroom