Collectables

An exceptionally rare miniature book, a 'Kalendarium Evangelia' printed by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp in 1570, measuring just 35mm high appeared at a recent Bonhams sale.

Dealer describes his collecting and selling story ahead of South Yorkshire fair...

Showing some internal staining, browning and other soiling, this 1517 Lyon printing of one of the works of GB Castiglione, a humanist and sometime tutor to the future Elizabeth I, sports a contemporary English binding of blind-stamped calf.

Some of the more successful lots in a June 1 sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) of the first portion of the Richard Beagle collection of angling and sporting books were scarce accounts of early hunting trips in the Yukon and Wyoming.

As in many previous years, the months of June and July signal the arrival of large numbers of important book, manuscript and related sales.

Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist, was engaged by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to provide a pictorial record of his 1833-34 travels among the Indians of the Upper Missouri regions of North America.

ATG's selection of upcoming sale highlights.

For a number of years now ship’s logs have made good prices at auction. Those featuring naval engagements, significant encounters in foreign lands, or with added, if amateur illustration – even logs kept on whalers that use simple sketches to record a catch – offer something extra.

Written in 1960, Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls broke the silence on sex in a socially repressive Ireland, seen through the lives of Kate and Baba, two young Irish country girls yearning for love who move from rural Ireland to Dublin to find it.

“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Governments present at Head Quarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender…”

As part of a five-year plan to grow its interest in the coin collecting market, The Royal Mint has taken a share in Mayfair numismatic dealership Sovereign Rarities.

Featuring more than 70 decorative or historiated initials in full contemporary colour, a fine copy of a Biblia germanica printed by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg in 1475-76 sold for a record €120,000 (£103,450) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

Barbara Chalk runs Rare and Antique Books, an online book dealership, with her husband Robert.

Cleaned, restored and recently rebound in brown buckskin, together with a 1966 reprint, a rare 1495 Venetian first of Avicenna’s Metaphysica made €26,000 (£22,260) in a Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) sale. The price was slightly under estimate but a record nonetheless.