Collectables

Luxury sets were a feature of the Pacific Book Auctions sale of February 7 and seen left are sample volumes of a 48-volume set of the works of Alexandre Dumas, one of 1000 ‘Editions de Medicis’ sets published in Boston c.1900 and here sumptuously bound in dark green morocco gilt with red inlays to the covers, which reached $13,000 (£9155).

VINTAGE FILM POSTERS: Cult film classics such as Flash Gordon, The Mummy and Dr X may no longer be the crowd-pullers they once were, but these cinematic greats live on through their original advertising posters.

One of the greatest public works that Sir Edwin Lutyens undertook was the erection of a doll’s house for Queen Mary in 1923. A miniature palace inside Windsor Castle, Mary’s doll’s house was more opulently decorated than the humble abodes of her loyal, grown-up subjects.

This bright red Dinky Holland Coachcraft streamlined van was one of only a few thousand, which in terms of Dinky’s prolific production rate is very few, to be made during their single year of production in 1935.

WILLIAM Wood’s New Englands Prospect..., first published in London in 1634, was intended to “enrich the knowledge of the mind-travelling Reader, or benefit the future Voyager”.

A high spot of the Sotheby’s sale of December 12 was a group of Jane Austen firsts in the original boards. Illustrated above right is the former Lady Shelley/Earl Spencer/Jerome Kern copy of her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility of 1811, the blue boards with cream paper spines, which made $70,000 (£49,295).

On the morning of March 28, 1941 at about 11.30am, 59-year-old novelist Virginia Woolf put on her thick fur coat, picked up the faux bamboo walking stick illustrated above and left her farmhouse in Rodmell, Sussex.

Though not so credited, this coloured lithograph, Grand Prix de l’A.C.F. 1913 (Motocyclettes) has a very Gamy/Montaut look about it. In the literature section of a motoring sale held by Bonhams at the RAF Museum, Hendon, on February 25, it sold at £250.

THE Roberts Holy Land offered in the 120-lot book section of this Kent sale at Mervyn Carey on 20 February, a six-vol. 1855 quarto edition, had been kept in a barn and had virtually disintegrated over the years.

Christie’s (20.93/11.96% buyer’s premium) staged their first Automobile sale in Paris on February 12 at the Rétromobile vintage car show, which attracts 100,000 visitors every year.

THE Taunton rooms of Greenslade Taylor Hunt (10 per cent buyer’s premium) were graced with the presence of a “minor media celebrity”, on St. Valentine’s day when this rare Steiff rod-jointed teddy bear, right, known as Percy, made an appearance.

FOOTBALL programmes were the mainstay of this mixed book, card and ephemera sale for Acorn Auctions in Trafford Park, but though one job lot of two dozen Manchester United programmes of 1960s-80s vintage did sell for £620, a similar number of single sheet programmes of 1945-46, valued at up to £2000, failed to sell, and for once it was Manchester City who came out on top.

PARIS: The whole history of French coins from Gaulish times to the present was covered by the Jean Vinchon (10.764% buyer’s premium) sale in Paris on November 6. Because it was a single collection rather than the random assemblage that chance had brought across the counter there were many choice examples on offer.

TWO maps of the Americas, as predicted, brought the highest bids in this Sussex sale at Rupert Toovey on 13 February. A copy of William Heather’s New General Chart of the West Indies... of 1809, backed on (contemporary) paper and with some light soiling and a few small tears to the blank margins, was sold at £900, while for Heather’s New Chart of the Coast of America from Philadelphia to the Gulf of Florida..., a corrected and improved edition of 1812, bidding rose to £1450.

The value of toy trains is rarely tied to world events, but this Märklin 00 gauge replica of a London Midland and Scottish railway locomotive was manufactured by the German toy firm for export to Britain in 1938.

Tea-drinking first took off in the West in the late 17th century and in its wake came a whole host of paraphernalia associated with the consumption and storage of the beverage.

Would that every soldier was awarded a piece of porcelain, as well as a medal, for acts of outstanding bravery. What a civilised army that would make.

TWO LOTS were bid to £800 in the 150-lot book and map portion of this Hampshire sale on 6 February at George Kidner, which put them some way ahead of most others on the day.

The music sale held by Sotheby’s on December 7 contained two exceptional manuscripts – both of them presenting examples of the composer’s best loved works.

THE COPY of Colonel William Fitzpatrick’s Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul... that sold for £380 in this Somerset sale at Greenslade Taylor Hunt on 13 December was not a great one.