Collectables

A SILVER medal awarded to the Master of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, who was at the ship's helm throughout the Battle of Trafalgar is to be sold by Nantwich, Cheshire, auctioneers Peter Wilson.

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.

THE amputation tools used by a surgeon on the battlefields of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) will appear at auction in October.

THE uplifting story of how West Auckland FC won ‘the first world cup’ has gone down in the annals of English football.

A SCULPTURE has been returned to its former home more than 70 years after it was looted during the Blitz from a bombed London church.

A VERY large, hand-drawn plan of the Titanic, used in the official inquiry after it sank in 1912, has sold for £220,000 at Wiltshire auction house, Henry Aldridge & Son.

THE man who oversaw the French Revolution's 'reign of terror' but who finally met his end at the guillotine himself, Maximilien de Robespierre, was back on the block again at the end of last month as Sotheby's auctioned an extraordinary cache of documents in Paris.

SOTHEBY'S will sell the earliest rules of club football on July 14. They are part of a lot which includes the historic archive of the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC.

THE London Islamic sales week got of to a ‘magic carpet’ start when Morton and Eden held an 81-lot sale devoted to the rarest Islamic coins.

ONE of the rarer acts of peace-time bravery saw the crew of the airship R33 awarded the Air Force Medal.They included George Ernest Long, whose medals and associated ephemera came up for auction at Lockdales of Ipswich on March 27.

SOUTH London saleroom Rosebery’s of West Norwood had to be evacuated on Wednesday, March 23 after a client left a Second World War bomb brought in for valuation at the front desk.

ON visiting a bungalow just south of Knutsford for a probate valuation, Patrick Cheyne had been dismayed to find nothing of any value in the home itself – but rather better things emerged when he was shown the garage.

DETERMINING whether something is an artwork or not is at the centre of an appeal to the UK Supreme Court in a copyright dispute between Star Wars producer George Lucas and one of his former prop makers.

SOUTH Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961 brought with it hefty import taxes on finished luxury goods: a difficult moment for Meccano, for whom the colonies were key markets.

MORE than 20,000 naval postcards, thousands of photographs and slides, and a large quantity of books will be put up for sale at Lawrences in Crewkerne in May.

AN original Monopoly set offered as part of the toy collection of publisher Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) and his sons made $120,000 (plus premium) at a recent auction at Sotheby's New York.

THROUGHOUT this month, Sotheby’s New York are devoting an entire floor of their York Avenue headquarters to what they call “the largest and most comprehensive collection of magnificent quality European and American toys and trains ever assembled”.

WITH the coin world descending on the Big Apple for the New York International Numismatic Convention, once again the new year started with a bang in this sector.

DEMAND for fine wines showed no sign of abating at the latest round of auctions in Hong Kong.

A SALE of Olympic memorabilia at Vassy-Jalenques SARL in Paris on February 3 includes this rare official Olympic torch from the 1952 Helsinki summer games.