Collectables

THE first book on swimming printed in England was Everard Digby’s De arte natandi of 1587.

PREVIOUSLY unpublished letters from the poet John Betjeman are to form part of the setting for a travelling display of early 20th century jewellery designer Helen Holmes at Bonhams.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

SPINK have set a new record for an English silver coin with the £180,000 they took for a 1663 Charles II silver Crown on September 27.

CHARTERHOUSE auctioneers in Sherborne, have broken the auction record for a Military Medal group only two months after the previous one was set.

What price one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy? On December 10, Sotheby’s New York will offer for sale one of just 17 surviving 13th century copies of Magna Carta.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

Suffolk antique tool auctioneer Tony Murland (10% buyer’s premium) is known for his hyperbolic cataloguing but the description accompanying this nearly 400-year-old horn handled hunting knife was a classic.

Bonhams, who have recently taken on a number of staff from Sotheby’s, have announced that Christie’s two most senior motoring directors and one of its motoring consultants will join their car department on November 1.

Following Christie’s decision to hold liquor sales in New York, Boston auctioneer Skinner is to launch a wine department.

LONDON coins, medals and stamps specialists Spink have bought the American stamp auctioneers Shreves Philatelic Galleries.

NOBLE Investments, the publicly listed coins company and owners of Baldwin’s auctioneers, have branched out into the stamps market.

OLD film footage of youngsters playing amid the rubble of the Blitz-ravaged London showed that even in our darkest hour war could be turned into a game.

Kent’s Canterbury Auction Galleries were one of the few salerooms to hold a good quality art and antiques sale in August.

DUBLIN auctioneers James Adam have negotiated a €3.5m (£2.4m) sale of remarkable papers setting a record for a single transaction of documents relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

In the same way that Americans hold any material relating to the Pilgrim Fathers in the highest esteem, so anything associated with Australia’s earliest European settlers carries a huge premium for its domestic market.

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

IT must be every trustee’s nightmare. You dispose of vanloads of unwanted books for what you think is a realistic £36,000, but then over a period of less than a year you see the pick of them then raise around £500,000 at auction.

Does Rowling have them rattled?

Despite riding the crest of a wave of popularity, Theodore Roosevelt declined to run again for the presidency in 1908. Instead he anointed William Howard Taft as his successor and famously embarked upon a year of big game hunting in Africa.