Collectables

Our regular listing of books auctions

An original watercolour of the 'Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry fetched nearly 10 times its low estimate, selling for a record £240,000 hammer.

Jesse Rossa of California firm Triolet Rare Books is one of the exhibitors at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair.

Catalogue of ‘mechanised thought’ counts as one of the stand-out items for sale at San Francisco event

Entertainment memorabilia specialist auction house Propstore held some of the most successful sales of 2023.

An original dust jacket made all the difference when Weiss Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) offered a first edition copy of Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness in Lynbrook, New York.

A c.1964 publicity photograph signed by all four members of The Beatles sold for £13,000 at Bristol auction house Auctioneum (21% buyer’s premium).

Top lot in the Potter & Potter (25% buyer’s premium) comics sale featured the debut of Captain America – introduced on the cover punching Hitler.

The Doll & Bears Sale at Vectis (20.83% buyer’s premium) in Stockton-on-Tees included this rare Disney Donald Duck from the 1930s.

The appeal of more modern toys for the latest collectors buying based on nostalgia for childhood playthings was underlined by a large group of Transformers offered at Special Auction Services on January 17.

The toy company of Lines is often mentioned in relation to rocking horses but it was a double bay-fronted dolls’ house produced in c.1895 that impressed at Sheffield saleroom Ellis Willis & Beckett (19.5% buyer’s premium).

As well as being an artist’s model and gallery owner who founded the museum dedicated to the work of the sculptor Aristide Maillol, Dina Vierny was also known as a collector of antique dolls.

Penny in the slot machines known as a ‘Working Model’ came in many guises but, essentially, they all formed a large upright cabinet with a glass window top section.

Dolls’ houses from the collection of a renowned expert and author came to auction in Kent.