Collectables

Copy of ‘most influential work in the history of microscopy’ surfaces in Chicago saleroom.

Many of the unsung British heroes of both world wars served in the royal and merchant navies carrying and protecting supplies to Russia or the USSR.

On May 6, 1954 - the day British middle-distance athlete Roger Bannister (1929-2018) ran the first ever sub-four-minute mile - there were five official timekeepers plus a sixth watch manned by race commentator Norris McWhirter (1925-2004).

Single page was used as a promotion for this classic Conan Doyle work.

On November 25 Dix Noonan Webb sold the first tranche of banknotes from the enormous collection of the late Gus Mac Amhlaigh of Dublin.

The sale of Native American art and artefacts at Thomaston Place in Maine on January 14 will include a collection of historical items that mostly date from the 14-year period between the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee.

Successful £15.3m campaign secures British literature treasures including Brontë family manuscripts.

A single-page letter sent on the day before Steve Jobs’ 19th birthday to a close school friend, Tim Brown, sold for $400,000 (£292,825) in New York.

Sixteenth-century globes rarely appear on the market. So, Jim Spencer, Hansons’ works on paper specialist, had been amazed to encounter one at a valuation day in Bishton Hall, Staffordshire.

Perhaps established as early as 1735, the Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh holds claim to be the oldest golfing society in the world.

This group of clothing offered at Railtons (20% buyer’s premium) in Wooler, Northumberland, on December 3, was used by geologist and explorer Lawrence Wager (1904-65) during the 1933 Everest expedition.

Arsenal FC’s familiar red jersey with white arms is instantly recognisable to football fans worldwide now. However, a pair of shirts sold at the Graham Budd (20.5% buyer’s premium) December 1-2 auction in London show an earlier look.

This silver medal sold for £3250 at Fellows (23% buyer’s premium) is one of a relatively small number awarded at the Intercalated Games in Athens in 1906.

A group of medals awarded to a First World War ‘Tommy’ sold for a mid-estimate £2400 at Kent auction house C&T (22% buyer’s premium) on October 20-21. Not that unusual, it would seem.

Catalogued as ‘fine and exceptionally rare’, a north German parade cuirass is on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago after being sold at auction.

A copy of Richard Hakluyt’s 'The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation' takes a six-figure sum at Devon sale.

Modestly estimated at $3000-5000, a richly illustrated manuscript that presents in two finely bound folio volumes a pictorial record of the ‘Costumes et Plantes de L’Hindoustan’ made $80,000 (£58,395) in a New York auction.

A Christie’s New York (25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) online timed sale achieved six-figure bids for no fewer than eight lots and very high prices for a great many others while running up an impressive and premium-inclusive total of close on $4.75m (£3.45m).