Collectables

The New York International Numismatic Convention (NYINC) has taken the decision to drop antiquities from its offering amid concerns over looted art.

Forum Auctions is expanding into the wine and spirits market with the purchase of the assets of Bid for Wine from Stanley Gibbons.

With the centenary of the act that enfranchised female voters aged over 30 very much in the headlines, a collection of First World War uniforms and a photo album sold by C&T Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) underlines the role played by women in that conflict.

A coin that a set a record for a British five pound piece features among the hammer highlights for coins and banknotes sold across the year at auction.

More down to earth than the Bentley Speed Sixes and MG TDs of the classic car world, this 1961 GPO van nevertheless was a major draw at Biddle & Webb (20% buyer’s premium) in Birmingham.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.

After more than a decade of holding auctions in west London, Holts Auctioneers is relocating to a new saleroom to the south-east of the capital this March.

Daniel Crouch Rare Books sold this huge 25ft (7.6m) wide ‘Atlas of the City of New York – Borough of Manhattan’ map at the Winter Antiques Show last month.

The Zulu War medal awarded to Driver Charles Robson, batman to commanding officer Lieutenant John Chard during the epic defence of Rorke’s Drift, sold for £110,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on March 2.

First-edition sets with well-preserved jackets and perhaps a signature or an inscription usually make the really big money where Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is concerned, but a recent Dublin sale produced something rather unusual.

Published jointly by Kellogg & Comstock of New York and D Needham of Buffalo, c.1849-50, the rare and amusing hand coloured lithograph shown below is titled The Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California: I Neither Borrow nor Lend.

'Steal me not but let me jog; for I am Mrs Gwynn’s Dog.' For lovers of antique dog collars, collecting examples engraved with an amusing inscription such as this one, or a quirky owner’s name, is all part of the fun.

Three years since he launched his Suffolk auction house Bishop & Miller, managing director Oliver Miller is fine-tuning his sales line-up.

Almost a quarter of a century since ATG’s first overview of the numismatic market, ATG reviews the comings and goings of 2017

Michael Rothenstein’s illustration of Lennie Small and George Millon, the Californian migrant workers whose story is told in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, formed both the jacket illustration and the frontispiece (shown below) to the 1927, first UK edition.

It is a year now since Jim Spencer joined Derbyshire saleroom Hansons (20% buyer’s premium), tasked with building up the book sections of their sales.