Collectables

A group of early 19th century microscope slides mounted with specimens of fossilised wood sold for £11,500 (estimate £1000-1500) to a Canadian private collector at Special Auction Services (25% buyer’s premium) in Newbury.

Emile Berliner (1851-1921), a German clerk in a Washington DC haberdashery, is credited with inventing both the first commercially successful disc record and the first machine to play it.

Though the matching bindings were much later ones commissioned by London dealer Sotherans, a set of Charles Dickens’ five famous Christmas Books offered on August 28 by Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) of Chicago were all firsts of 1843-48, and in some instances first issue or first state copies.

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.