Collectables

Shropshire auctioneer sells ‘cartographic cornerstone’ of Tex-Mex history at surprise £16,500...

'So Geographers in Afric maps With Savage-Pictures fiill their Gaps; And o’er uninhabitable Downs Place Elephants for want of Towns'.

The Dinky Toys journey began hot on the heels of the success of Meccano’s ‘Modelled Miniatures’ series of railway accessories, launched to accompany its Hornby train sets.

A crease that runs around the lower part of the dust jacket detracts somewhat from the appeal of a first impression copy of the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books, Casino Royale of 1953, but it sold for £16,000 in a March 1 sale held by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

A coin sold in the Dix Noonan Webb (20% buyer’s premium) auction on March 15 is a poignant reminder of the mysterious death of the Princes in the Tower.

Past playthings by a host of famous vintage toy manufacturers will feature in the next Signature sale of Toys and Trains held by the specialist auction house Bertoia in Vineland, New Jersey, on March 25.

The legal impasse surrounding the restitution of thousands of historical documents and manuscripts from the scandal-hit Aristophil investment scheme was finally broken last week.

Typewriters on which famous books came into existence have featured on these pages before, but not for some time – and certainly not machines of a kind that that continue to be used by their owner to this day.

The taxidermy market continues to grow – particularly for showpiece lots such as the Bengal tiger’s head offered at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium) of Winchester on February 8.

Munich coin fair raided by 30 police as Nagel moves Asian sale to Austria

Possibly the first printed reference to a ‘Great White’ shark attack is found in a four-page pamphlet, printed in Naples in 1721, from which the woodcut shown here is taken.

Following a deal between the German state and specialist manuscripts dealer Les Enluminures, this 10th century illuminated Gospels created at Liesborn Abbey will return to Westphalia.

Crymogaea sive rerum Islandicarum… is a very rare history of Iceland by Arngrimur Jónsson, a scholar and teacher also known as Arngrimur the Learned.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning lots fall flat... but annotated Dorian Gray leaves treble the estimate

With BBC Radio 4 currently offering a season of programmes focusing on the Red Planet in fact and fiction, a couple of books from the Edgar Rice Burroughs series of Martian fantasies that made high prices in a recent US sale are an appropriate choice for these reports.