Collectables

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Illustrated from drawings made by William Gibb, printed under his supervision and signed by the author, George Petree, one of 16 special copies of Dundee, its Quaint and Historic Old Buildings that were printed on Japanese paper in 1895 made a far higher than expected result at auction.

Stand-out cartographic lots sold in Gloucestershire include a string of early rarities

Underground or overground, London travel memorabilia amounted to a £95,000 hammer total at Catherine Southon (24% buyer’s premium).

Complete year runs of Beano from the years 1958 and ‘59 that sold at £3050 and £3550 topped the bidding in a Comic Book Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) timed online sale that ended on August 29.

It’s toy time at Sandown Park on Saturday, November 13, where Barry Potter and family hold the largest of their regular vintage toy fairs with 500 tables staffed by more than 300 dealers.

A rare 17th century elephant automaton clock was the star of the Christie’s New York Exceptional sale when it sold at $2.15m (£1.58m) to a private buyer.

High demand today for manuscripts revealing 17th century domestic arrangements.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Bid to a much higher than expected £4000 on August 19 at Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) was a lot offering 10 volumes of pamphlets, offprints, reports, legal evidence, etc, relating to licensing laws and the campaign to regulate consumption in the UK.

Coin hoard dispersed in white-glove auction.

Oliver Wiseman has joined Bonhams as a senior wine specialist in Paris.

Of such high quality that they justify the description ‘cabinet miniatures’, examples of a small group of silk and metal thread embroideries of Charles I can be seen in the V&A and Wallace Collection in London and in the New York Met.

Oddly titled by its creator as such, an extraordinary watercolour featured on August 10 at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Fernhurst.

On October 30 in Chicago Potter & Potter is holding the first part of the Ken Klosterman collection of magic-related artefacts.

This ventriloquist’s dapper dummy was one of the surprise star turns at Halls’ (23% buyer’s premium) Shrewsbury auction.

Including seafaring, tin, copper, studio potteries and fishing, a Penzance sale covered just about everything from the region bar pasties.

It was when the book was in the process of being catalogued by Bretells (19% buyer’s premium) of Newport, Shropshire, that a second impression copy of Tolkien’s The Hobbit was seen to bear the author’s signature.