Collectables

The first Victoria Cross awarded to a civilian is coming up for auction at Noonans on September 14.

A volume containing first editions of two important geological works by Dr Gideon Mantell sold for £2000 in West Sussex.

Visitor numbers are likely to be swelled above the usual 1000 a day at the annual 'York National Book Fair' held at the city’s racecourse on Friday and Saturday, September 9-10.

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

Two sporting ‘firsts’ are being marked by lots coming up in separate auctions this month.

Copy of his first book was a later gift from Sir John Heygate to Tarka the Otter author

Making its third appearance at auction in almost 60 years, the 34pp autograph manuscript of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’, a tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection of his stories that first appeared in The Strand magazine in 1893, has sold for $280,000 (£236,090) in Dallas.

Organised by Tricorn Fairs, the biannual Bristol Fine Antique Arms Fair returns on Sunday, September 11, at a new venue: the Aztec West Hotel and Spa.

A 1914 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland proved one of the principal attractions in a July 26 sale held by Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

The highlight of the latest maritime sale at Adam Partridge in Liverpool was a collection of 40 menus for dinners held between 1899-1919 in honour of various British and foreign dignitaries.

Special Auctions Services (25% buyer’s premium) in Newbury sold the collection of John Garside last month.

The appetite for early Manchester United memorabilia is strong – even for a player who started out at their arch-rivals

The headline borrows the title given to an online Christie’s (26/20% buyer’s premium) sale – one that presented more than 80 modern first editions.

In the years 1881-82, the Rev William Essery was for many months a passenger on the SS Ceylon.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s poems to be published in her lifetime, 'The Colossus and other Poems', sold for a record £75,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

In its catalogue notes for the July 22 Scottish Greats: Football, Golf, Fishing and more sale, McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) was careful to say regarding a football shirt on offer that it could give no guarantee it was exactly as billed.

Sasha dolls were popular presents in the sixties and seventies and still in demand enough at auction today to hit four figures.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Percy Thomas Tibbles, born in Hampstead, London, in 1881, was destined to become famous for cutting women in half.