Medallion

Medals expert familiar to millions through the Antiques Roadshow chats about his latest book telling a very personal story.

A medal with nine clasps from a soldier who was wounded in the head and twice in the thigh during the Peninsular War stood out in a recent sale held by Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s (23% buyer’s premium).

Latest result for a ‘not in the face of the enemy’ award underlines how such honours have become a popular collecting field

If you look closely at both Lady Butler and Alphonse de Neuville’s paintings of what is probably the most famous British colonial action of the 19th century – Rorke’s Drift – you can pick out a man with a long, thick red beard wearing a blue tunic.

Despite the brief cataloguing of lot 129 in the Ellis Willis & Beckett (21.5% buyer’s premium) sale, the £4200 hammer price on February 17 indicated that bidders had fought it out for something special.

Following Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of Russia, Winston Churchill proposed the Arctic Convoys to deliver supplies to the Soviet Union via Iceland.

Established in 1687 by James II (also James VII of Scotland), membership of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle is in the personal gift of the sovereign, just as it is with the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit.

This 1642 silver medal by the German medallist Sebastian Dadler (1586-1657) celebrates the arrival in the Netherlands of Princess Mary (1631-60), eldest daughter of Charles I and sister of the future Charles II.

It’s not often that a group of medals offered at auction includes two that were in fact officially revoked. However, a lot that appeared at an East Yorkshire auction house on June 27 reflected a notorious tale of colonial corruption.

A “very rare” First World War pair of medals and memorial plaque to a female casualty of the SS Lusitania came up for auction at Mayfair saleroom Noonans (24% buyer’s premium) on July 16.

Late 18th century Order of the Garter soars way over estimate as part of an Austrian sale

To say that a mid-16th century gold medal that was auctioned by Künker (25% buyer’s premium) in Osnabrück during the sale of March 16-24 is rare would be quite an understatement.

The unexpected but very welcome increase in demand that the market experienced amid Covid lockdowns continued in 2022 as restrictions eased – and auction houses are optimistic about another strong performance this year

In May 2019 Spink (20% buyer’s premium) medal specialist Marcus Budgen was entrusted to catalogue the medals of Gunner A Howard, ‘N’ Battery, 5th Brigade, Royal Artillery, one of just four members of the RA present at the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War.

A private medal collection rated by Ipswich saleroom Lockdales (18% buyer’s premium) as “magnificent” was offered on May 20-22.

Flight Lieutenant Maurice ‘Mark’ Mounsdon was one of only four remaining members of Sir Winston Churchill’s ‘The Few’ when he died in 2019 aged 101.

A medal awarded to a member of the only Canadian battalion composed of black soldiers to serve in the First World War has sold in a London auction.