Collectables

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.

One of the earliest surviving incandescent light bulbs, made by the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) in the 1870s, sold for £7500 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Bonhams’ sale titled Instruments of Science and Technology.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 25-October 6, 2018.

The annual London Writing Equipment Show at the Holiday Inn in Bloomsbury on Sunday October 7 will be a sell-out, says coorganiser Jeremy Collingridge.

For most enthusiasts of Airfix’s plastic construction kits, it was the company’s dramatic box artwork that caught the eye when choosing the next model to make.