Collectables

Bringing the highest price yet at one of Richard Edmonds’ (20% buyer’s premium) specialist Petroliana and Automobilia sales in Chippenham was a rare petrol pump globe.

“There is no such thing as modern art, there is only art and it is perpetual.” The author of these lines was, perhaps surprisingly, the highly modern Austrian painter Egon Schiele and are part of an artistic manifesto written on July 17, 1911.

The practice of placing a metal mark on a building to indicate insurance against a fire started in earnest after the Great Fire of London (1666). Each insurance company had its own fire service and distinctive logo.

The intriguing name for Benjamin Smith’s Norfolk business came from an ink sgraffito painting he bought at Spitalfields antiques market.

A Cecil Beaton sketch of Christian Dior working in his studio in Paris sold for £5200 (estimate £500-700) as part of the estate of society dress designer Ian Thomas (1929-93).

The whistle that blew after just a minute of play to signal the first penalty kick ever awarded in a World Cup Final has sold for £4200 at a London auction.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Musket that fired the first shot in 1775 American revolution battle appears in US saleroom.

Drizen Dickens lots notch up notable results despite some higher-value unsolds.

Bid to a record £20,000 at a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 26 was a beautifully bound example of Piranesi’s Campus Martius Antiquae Urbis.

The impact of institutions on the collector-dominated market in fans was witnessed when the best-seller at a dedicated Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) auction went to a museum.

Well placed in Tyne & Wear to receive a number of miners’ safety lamps from the old Durham and Northumberland coalfields, Boldon Auction Galleries (17.5% buyer’s premium) was presented with something of a mystery in the form of the lamp pictured here.

Sold for a record $2750 (£2220) at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) in California on October 10 was an inscribed copy of The World Set Free, a prophetic novel by HG Wells.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Rare medals stolen from a car and found discarded in a park 10 months later have been reunited with their owner thanks to an ATG news story.