Collectables

MADAM – Have sellers of antiquarian books never considered the use of ‘Post-it’ notes? Do they not realise that pencil scribbles actually devalue the product that they are trying to sell?

This year marks a 20th anniversary for Northamptonshire dealer Mark Goodger. He first established the business Hampton Antiques with his wife Sara in 1998 and deals in antique boxes and accessories from the 18th-21st centuries.

A new record for a camera sold at auction was set by WestLicht in Vienna when one of only a handful of surviving Leica 0-series cameras – this one carrying the serial number 122 – sold at €2m (£1.76m) plus 20% buyer’s premium, to a private buyer from Asia.

Among the first sales of BADA 2018 was this modernist Archibald Knox silver and pink enamel inkwell sold from the stand of The Peartree Collection for more than £10,000.

An unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet was this set of four early real tennis rackets. They came from a client in the North of England and had been owned by the family for many years.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 20-29, 2018.

A first English edition of Charlotte Bernhardi’s translation of her father, Admiral Krusenstern’s Memoir… of his 1803-06 circumnavigation of the globe was one of the rarer items offered at Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 20.

The first week of March ended with a flurry of sales in both the UK and the US. Together they brought a number of exceptional results.

Early children’s books, many from a single collection formed by the late Mary Joy Sanger, provided a principal attraction in a February 27 sale held in Penzance by David Lay (18% buyer’s premium).

A previously unknown copy of the Golden Age comic that heralds the arrival of Batman sold for a premium-inclusive $569,000 (£410,000) in York, Pennsylvania last week.

An 80-lot James Bond collection offeredin a recent Lincolnshire sale had been formed over a 40-year period.

Paul Comolera (1818-97) was one of a series of prominent sculptors who travelled to work in Stoke-on-Trent at a time of political upheaval in France.

A number of books on plastic surgery featured in a recent Californian sale including an 1833, first English edition of Johann F Dieffenbach’s Surgical Observations on the Restoration of the Nose.

Flash from the past at the Diss rooms of TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

Dwarfed as they were by the £440,000 oil of St John the Evangelist (see ATG last week, No 2332), a number of other lots helped to make Holloway’s (20% buyer’s premium) first major sale of the year in Banbury on February 27 an event to remember.