Collectables

A group of five autograph letters sent by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones to a Miss Megan Jones in the years 1965-66 brought a bid of £4500.

Thomas Edison’s electric pen might not have flourished as planned for the purpose of duplicating documents but if you have a tattoo you can be thankful.

Early stereoscopic images featured in the collection of a dealer curious about how technology transformed life in Victorian times

The Winter Maritime Sale at Eldreds on February 28-March 1 includes an 18th century Islamic brass quadrant made in the Maghreb region of north-west Africa.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Steam engine made in France and later installed in Sussex museum graced same exhibition as the Eiffel Tower

This instrument dates from the founding days of one of the world’s most significant aerospace manufacturers: Short Brothers

Musical automata were the top hits at Tennants’ (22% buyer’s premium) auction of scientific and musical instruments and cameras.

The Paris firm of Roullet & Decamps was famous for automata, walking and moving dolls and toys.

The French anatomist and naturalist Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1880) set up a workshop making very accurate human and veterinary anatomical models.

Dreweatts in Newbury has for sale this fine Victorian ‘weather station’ with a full provenance and a portrait of its former owner.

Georg Merz and Joseph Mahler took over the Utzschneider & Fraunhofer company in 1839.

Trebling its high estimate in a sale in Surrey was a large, in fact elephant folio-sized Atlas Royal… from c.1733

The slide rule shown here belonged to Dhunjeebhoy Rustomjee, who came from a fine line of Indian master ship builders in ancestry.

English history and law were the mainstays of an excellent collection sold in North Yorkshire

The prototype B1 Vulcan first flew in 1952 and it is a sign of the design’s longevity and durability that the last of these bombers was taken out of service only in 1984.

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.