Collectables

The first book printed and published in Antarctica was 'Aurora Australis', a work produced during the 1908-09 Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.

Head in his hand and seated on a bucket for his 1941, first annual appearance, Oor Wullie, a favourite character from the Scottish Sunday Post, led the bidding in a September 9 comics sale.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from October 9-20, 2018.

'Who’s Absent? Is it you?' Simple and direct, these words appear on a British First World War poster, produced as recruits began to dwindle.

Despite the fact that smoking cigarettes has been ostracised, the rise in interest for vintage smoking paraphernalia has increased.

“Conteyning divers Excellent & Approoved Remedies in Physique – and Chirurgery…”, an early 17th century manuscript of some 130 or so pages that seems to have been intended for publication, brought a much higher than expected bid in a recent London sale.

An American library on the history of computing formed by the late Erwin Tomash provided the new season’s first major sale.

Jean Théodore Descourtilz’s Oiseaux brillans du Brésil “…is so rare that I had begun to doubt its existence”.

In the UK Huntley and Palmers and McVitie’s might be the brand names to trip off the tongue at the mention of the word biscuit. In France it is LU that first comes to mind.

A collection of fashion books and plates offered as part of an Exeter sale on September 12 was led at £1050 by an 1831, second edition of John Jackson’s The Improved Tailor’s Aera.

Richard Lobel is the founder of numismatic dealership Coincraft. Trading for 63 years, it celebrates its 50th anniversary in London this year

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from October 2-12, 2018.

Before finally achieving success in 1945 with The Pursuit of Love and then with Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford had published three novels. Two of these made record sums in a recent Stansted sale.