Collectables

Special Auction Services (SAS) achieved its most valuable ever auction last month, selling banknotes.

A 1556 first edition copy of Welshman Robert Recorde’s The Castle of Knowledge was estimated at £5000-10,000 and made £12,600 including buyer’s premium at Hansons’ November 1 Library auction.

German artists take many of the top spots as another colourful selection comes to the saleroom

In November 1915, Captain Wilton John Rix of the 6th Bedfordshire Regiment wrote from France to the East Suffolk Gazette with an understated and moving plea for a relief from the war’s monotony.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Lot 57 at Sutton Hill Farm Country Auctions on October 21 comprised ‘2 framed paintings, signed J Cole, one other’, taking a hammer price of £8. Lot 59, a ‘vintage Sesame Street Big Bird piano toy’ (in working order) made it into double figures, at £14.

A rare Islamic Mecca-centred world map, considered a masterpiece from Safavid Persia, will star in the Islamic and Indian Art sale at Bonhams.

The eggs of the extinct Aepyornis maximus or elephant bird are the largest of any known species.

Only 155 Arctic Medals 1875-76 were issued, with 59 of those being to HMS Discovery.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions available via thesaleroom.com

Airborne forces memorabilia is usually a winner at auction but especially when it’s an early example

Originally Roman, Portchester Castle near Portsmouth was first used to house captured enemy soldiers in 1665, when England was at war with the Netherlands.

The front page of ATG No 2558 featured a Second World War nurse’s cape decorated with an array of cloth regimental badges that sold at Essex auction house Sworders in August last year.

A collection of correspondence penned by leading figures of the 20th century to an Oxford academic raised more than £20,000 for charity at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) on October 10.

Among recent paratrooper items that impressed at auction, this Polish badge with combat wreath doubled the top estimate at Bosleys to take £4000 from a UK online private buyer.

One of the best performers against estimate at Tennants’ (24% buyer’s premium) Militaria & Ethnographica sale on September 20 was a fascinating collection of photographs and ephemera relating to a French Second World War hero.

The ‘fine and scarce’ 1918 Sopwith Camel fighter ace’s Distinguished Flying Cross and bar awarded to Captain Solomon Clifford Joseph (previewed in ATG No 2613) sold within estimate for £20,000 in Mayfair.

Follow-up edition of a classic avian work was more or less a new publication thanks to extra research