Collectables

A silver war badge issued to Lance-Corporal Harold Sandford Mugford of the Machine Gun Corps was a surprise highlight of a Gloucestershire sale.

If you ever encounter the pub quiz question ‘who is the smallest footballer ever to represent England at a senior level’ just remember an FA Cup winner’s medal sold at sporting specialist auction house Knights (20% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Painted with an image of an urn to the front cover of its vellucent binding and with a view of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire to the rear, the Book of Common Prayer & Book of Psalmes shown below was printed in 1774 by T Wright & W Gill for the University of Oxford.

A single-owner collection of 33 sovereigns from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I generated a white-glove result at London auction house Dix Noonan Webb (24% buyer’s premium).

An exceptional, expanded and specially cased example of Ippolito Rosellini’s 'I Monumenti dell Egitto e della Nubia' of 1832-34 topped the bidding in a Fonsie Mealy (20% buyer’s premium) sale of the library from Howth Castle.

Among the book lots offered as part of an October 7-8 sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) the earliest was a Burgundian ‘Hours of the Virgin’ manuscript.

Two very different lots shared the highest bid honours in a September 30 sale held in Norfolk. A manuscript recipe book dating from the late 17th/early 18th century onwards was, as such, accomplished in several different hands.

The game of golf (originating on the eastern coast of Scotland) and mauchlineware (the name given to a family of wooden souvenirs made in south-west Scotland over a period of a century) would seem ideal bedfellows.

Buying online took off in the trade last year with one notable example being The Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) which launched its monthly online back-to-back book fairs in April.

A copy of the first folio atlas ever printed in the Islamic world has sold for £69,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – the highlight of the first day of Dreweatts’ sale titled Weston Hall and the Sitwells: A Family Legacy.

Estimated at £200-300, this kaskara sold for £8200 at Dawsons (23% buyer’s premium) in Maidenhead on October 28.

Library on offer at Forum auction in London was based on works collected by a man whose roles ranged from alchemist to diplomat

Leering 4ft 7in (1.4m) out from the saleroom wall and with a 4ft 2in (50cm) antlers spread, a massive taxidermy moose head and shoulders was the major trophy at the best-yet biannual Country and Sporting sale at Mitchells (22% buyer’s premium).

Top names in their different fields, ages and markets, Wurlitzer and Armand Marseilles were the star makers at Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium).

The Spanish woollen rug illustrated here was pitched at £100-200 in Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Abingdon rooms on October 18.

Buyers looking for something a bit different this Christmas could head to the Ephemera Society’s winter fair which is back at the Holiday Inn in Bloomsbury, London, on Sunday, December 5.

In demand at home and abroad during his lifetime, the eminent miniaturist John Smart was an international draw at a trio of sales.

Running to just 20 or so words, a tiny signed card in which Abraham Lincoln instructs Edwin Stanton to meet with the African-American abolitionist and officer Martin Delany in Washington led the bidding at Doyle (26/21/15% buyer’s premium) on September 23.

I have just received ATG No 2516 wherein the old question of first edition and first impression is raised in the Letters section.