Collectables

Estimated at £600-800, a 1777 first in marbled board covers of John Chapman and Peter Andre’s 'Map of the County of Essex from an Actual Survey' was sold for what would appear to be an auction record.

Despite their sterling service with the Allies, a large number of Polish soldiers could not return home when the fighting ended, as a fascinating archive reveals.

Lt William Emlyn Hardwick (1885-1918) was born in Brecon but by the time he enlisted to fight in the First World War he was living in Australia.

The vast majority of Mauchline items seen today are engraved transfer-printed wares or other types of ‘fancy Scotch woodwork’ from the Victorian era such as fernware or tartanware.

Stroud Auction Rooms’ sale on November 9-10 will feature over 1000 lots of guns, weapons, medals and militaria, including two notable collections.

A group of father-and-son lots related to the Royal Navy may have been small in size but revealed a combined service in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that was lengthy.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Air Commander J Searby had a key role to play in the Peenemunde Raid targeting the V weapons factory during the night of the August 17-18, 1943, as part of the RAF’s elite Path Finder Force.

Relatively few gallantry medals available for what was short self-contained conflict, heroic stories involving highly collectable regiments, a relatively morally unambiguous backstory (for British collectors at least)… the Falklands War can generate high demand at auction.

Much, much earlier than most other entries in a comics and comic art sale that ran at Heritage (25% buyer’s premium) from September 30 to October 2 were examples of the work of Winsor McCay (c.1866-67-1934), who was well known as an accomplished editorial and political cartoonist and for his work in the world of animation and cartoon strips.

The big attraction in a job lot estimated at £60-100 that went on to sell for £14,000 in a September 23 sale held by Ewbank’s (25% buyer’s premium) was a copy of Britannia: or, a Chorographical Description…, Dr Edmund Gibson’s 1695, updated and English language version of a well-known earlier work.

When Bill Speakman won his Victoria Cross on November 4, 1951, fighting beside him was Corporal John Pender.

A police ledger sold more than triple its top estimate featured original mug shots and criminal records relating to 500 people including a woman accused of plotting to kill Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1917.

In 1888, in response to a tender issued by the War Office, Prof Archibald Barr and Dr William Stroud submitted an application for an optical range-finder patent to the Patents Office.

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.