Collectables

Rachel Toy’s love of vintage started with trips to car boots sales with her mum in the 1980s and ignited a particular interest in 1960s and 1970s homeware. Today she runs Rachel’s Vintage Retro based in Pitstone in east Buckinghamshire.

The record business enjoyed by London’s coin auction houses during Covid lockdowns largely continued last year.

A cache of material from descendants of the Starbuck family, a Quaker whaling family influential in both the abolitionist movement and the founding of Nantucket as a whaling centre, was the highlight of Catherine Southon’s sale on February 8.

Produced six years after the much more common 1847 dated Gothic Crown of which 8000 were made, the 1853 Gothic Crown was struck only in a very limited number.

Struck c.1500 in Lisbon from Guinean gold provided by the explorations of Vasco da Gama, the 10 cruzados piece or Portugués do ouro of Manuel I (1495-1521) is a coin synonymous with the Age of Discovery.

To one side of this gold aureus struck in Rome in 180-83 is a sensually draped portrait of the goddess Venus.

The sale at Hansons (25% buyer’s premium) in Teddington on January 28 included what was marketed as ‘Queen Victoria’s post box’.

This single-page letter offered on January 19 by Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) tells the remarkable story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori (1762-1829).

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

The unexpected but very welcome increase in demand that the market experienced amid Covid lockdowns continued in 2022 as restrictions eased – and auction houses are optimistic about another strong performance this year

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Henry III (1216-72) issued his ‘gold penny’ for probably less than a year from August 16, 1357.

Instituted by Maria Dickin, the founder of the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA), in 1943, the Dickin Medal has been awarded on 71 occasions – 32 of them going to pigeons, 34 to dogs, four to horses and one to a cat.

The corpus of Anglo-Saxon coins lists only 20 coins for the Kentish king Eadberht.

The sale of gallantry awards held by Baldwin’s (20% buyer’s premium) on September 15 included this Edward Medal Exchange George Cross awarded for bravery at the Hedley Pit in 1930.

It is thought that Thomas Edison invented the first PsychoPhone in an effort to record messages from the subconscious or the afterlife.

Harmers’ (20% buyer’s premium) third numismatic auction held on September 26 was topped by this Indian rarity, a Gold Mohur issued under the Mughal emperor Nur al-Din Muhammad Jahangir (1605-27).

Sixteenth century work edited by Hakluyt aimed to encourage English expansion and influence

A sale of Banknotes at Noonans included this One Rupee note issued by the Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Goa in 1917. The rare first issue note took £13,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium).