Collectables

The range of British die-casts is so massive that enthusiasts tend to narrow the field and collect either by factory, period, vehicle type, category – or a combination of these. Nostalgia has a big part to play.

VECTIS have auctioned some exceptional Dinky collections over the past decade, but what made the David Ireland collection sale stand out was quality over quantity.

Old collections are the lifeblood of the arms and armour market, bringing carefully selected items with cast-iron provenance back to the market.

DOMINIC Winter, who included the Alfred A. Charleswoth collection of old railway tickets as part of their recent collectors' and transport sale, had only a limited track record on which to rely – they sold a rare ticket for around £2000 some seven years ago.

IN a world where instant electronic communication and exchange of information is available to all, two lengths of original Morse code ticker-tape seem akin to tele-antiquities.

MORTON & Eden are to auction a hoard of American gold coins discovered in the garden of an East London home where they were buried in fear of a Nazi invasion.

SINCE setting up on his own as Transporter Collectors Auctions eight years ago, Peter Card has enjoyed going by bike rather than car but the high point came on October 21 when a very rare 1869 model sold for a new high at his sale.

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.