Collectables

Presentation copies and private press books were a key feature of a Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) summer sale.

This first edition of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale will be offered for sale by Scammell Auctions in Adelaide on October 11.

Cache of 17th century coins found during restoration of medieval home in Brittany

Baron Ribeyre & Associés is holding a two-day auction at Drouot in Paris devoted to a collection of enamelled advertising signs from 1900-60.

Three very different lots brought six-figure bids at a Christie’s (25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) summer sale – and they were not the only ones to reach such impressive heights.

The sale of the collection of Robin Simpson (1940-2020) was celebration of British commemorative ceramics.

Mass-produced in America for several decades from the 1930s onwards, so-called ‘matchbooks’ were used to advertise alcohol in the post-prohibition era.

To mark the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death, Sotheby’s is holding an auction from September 15-22 in Paris titled Les Arts sous Influence: Napoléon.

Author’s works were well represented in London auction that included a £24,000 surprise

The studio potter John Maltby (1936-2020) created this chess set shown right for the Millennium celebrations at the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham.

Highlights of Chiswick Auctions earlier this summer

This 16in (39cm) mid-18th century saltglazed stoneware bottle has two relief moulded medallions to the shoulder.

One of the more unusual lots that I have encountered in recent times is a piece of card bearing the only known example of Mahatma Gandhi’s fingerprints.

The gun Pat Garrett used to kill Billy the Kid has been sold for a world auction record for any firearm at Bonhams in Los Angeles.

This poster was used in the promotion of the first-ever stage production of Peter Pan.

Siege money or ‘money of necessity’ was minted in Newark in 1646 during the town’s third siege and the last year of the First English Civil War.

Cyrene, founded by Greeks c.631BC in the uplands near present-day Shahhat in Libya, reached the height of its prosperity in the 5th century BC.

A tin of coins and medals consigned to Morton & Eden’s autumn sale included a number of early pieces from the American colonial period.