Collectables

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.

This handwritten page from the manuscript of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles will feature at Heritage Auctions.

Bid to £2400, a signed and inscribed copy of Philip Pullman’s nowadays scarce first novel, The Haunted Storm of 1971, was an unexpectedly successful lot in an online modern literature auction held by Forum (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on August 5.

Part of a medieval manuscript stolen in Italy more than 30 years ago has been returned with the help of London firm Bloomsbury Auctions.

A group of 52 Tudor, Stuart and Commonwealth England hammered gold coins rediscovered after 60 years shine at auction.

Stanley Gibbons’ plans to offer shares in the world’s most expensive stamp are set to become a reality with the launch of a new fractional ownership website.

A section of wood taken from the tree where Stanley met Livingstone in 1871 sold at Sworders’ September 14-15 Fine Interiors sale for £2400.

Housed in his home – Fox Pointe Manor in Anaheim, southern California – the rare book collection of radiologist Howard Knohl and his interior designer wife Linda reached more than 80,000 volumes.

The timed online sale of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana that closes at Christie’s New York on October 15 includes books from the estate of Theodore Cohn, a professor of political science.

Coming to Cheffins’ October 21 auction directly from the library of the Hertfordshire estate, Julians Park, the home of society hostess Audrey Pleydell-Bouverie, is a collection of 70 of the principal books.

Uncut and in near pristine condition, an exceptional first-state copy of TS Eliot’s poem The Waste Land was the top lot and also a recordbreaker at a Sotheby’s New York (26/20/13.9%% buyer’s premium) online sale.

Consigned by Frieda Hughes, who was not yet three years old when her mother took her own life, a collection of Sylvia Plath’s letters to Ted Hughes was sold by Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) in a timed online auction.

This calendar lists a selection of forthcoming specialist fairs and markets in the UK and around the world that feature categories including books, maps, posters, prints, works on paper and ephemera.

Tolkien classic in bespoke binding is one of the highlights as the London event returns

The sale of Early Printed Books at Swann in New York on October 14 includes this author’s presentation copy of Edward Jenner’s On the Varieties and Modifications of the Vaccine Pustule, Occasioned by an Herpetic State of the Skin.

On October 21 in London Plakas is offering this endowment document for the religious complex of the vizier Zaganos Pasha in Balikesir with the tughra of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror, dated beginning of jumada i AH866/February.