Collectables

A Renaissance helmet sold at a London auction will be reunited with its garniture (set of armour) after being bought by Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA).

The overall performance of the latest London sales of Old Master pictures and ‘important’ works of art was fairly mixed but the auction houses did at least welcome the return of some big-ticket items.

Valued at £2000-4000 in an Entertainment, Memorabilia & Movie Props sale held by Ewbank’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Send on May 27 was an uncorrected 1997 proof copy of a book that was soon to make publishing, cinematic and marketing history: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Dealers and auctioneers breathe sighs of relief as London Coin Fair returns as physical event. Report by Rachel Fellman.

Gloucestershire sale offered ‘finest library of early numismatic books still in private hands’.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Books and periodicals from the John Warburton motoring library featured in a May 25 sale presented by Transport Collector Auctions & Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) in the latter’s Crewkerne salerooms.

Charles Carroll’s printed copy of the Declaration of Independence – discovered earlier this year in a Scottish family home – sold at auction in Philadelphia for $3.7m (£2.85m) plus premium.

Wide range of material offered in Cambridge generates an array of interesting results.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Some lots in a recent Chicago sale were quite enormous – like a near-complete run of Limited Editions Club publications from the years 1929-2010.

This Ford Escort once owned by Diana, Princess of Wales, has been bought by a museum in Chile.

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

Thomas Riley was one of the few professional tattooists of the Victorian and Edwardian era and – with patrons among international royalty and the aristocracy – a key figure in the changing perception of tattoos from ‘sailors’ marks’ to ‘body art’.

Bid online to a much higher than expected £3200 in a Dominic Winter (24% buyer’s premium) sale was a framed and glazed Thomas Rowlandson etching with contemporary colouring that depicts a famous 'Milling Match…' in 1811.

What auctioneer Michael Callan called “a modest mid terrace town house in Irvine, Ayrshire” was the source of one of the star lots of a recent Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Ayr.

Some of the zest has gone out of the teddy bear market since the crazy days of two decades ago.

A copy of Ratzer’s 'Plan of the City of New York…' offered as part of a Doyle (26/21/15% buyer’s premium) sale in the spring left much to be desired.

More manageable version of monumental Nuremberg Chronicle makes five-times top guide