Collectables

The museum gallery created to house the extensive collection of one of the most active British medal collectors of recent times is to close.

To mark the new-look Harrogate Book Fair dealer Anthony Smithson of The Keel Row Bookshop in Whitley Bay will be offering for sale a 1948 first edition of the Hercule Poirot novel 'Taken At the Flood' signed by Agatha Christie.

The greatest actor of Victorian times and the creator of Dracula were among the notable figures featured in an autograph album sold at Surrey auction house John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

Based in workshops near the Place des Bergues in Geneva in the 1850s-60s, the jeweller Auguste Dutertre (1798-1866) found a niche making so-called ‘bijoux à montres’ - watch movements concealed in notebooks, powder-boxes or, as here, a pair of lorgnettes.

The Spirit of Ecstasy sculpture was created by Charles Sykes as a mascot for Rolls-Royce cars.

This silver desk clock designed in the form of a Rolls-Royce radiator grille with a red enamel badge and a miniature Spirit of Ecstasy mascot perched on top is thought to have been given as a Christmas gift by the British luxury car maker to one of its distributors.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Letter sent from Holyrood implores a nobleman to support his course in the middle of the Jacobite Rising

The so-called ‘dummy board’ or ‘silent companion’ is believed to have originated in Holland during the early 17th century.

Famed for his range of characters, Barry Humphries was also a bibliophile of great taste

The Ephemera Fair, the annual event from the Ephemera Society of America (ESA), runs this year with a conference on the history of invention as well as the usual huge selection of stock.

Scripts, photographs, posters and printed sheet music reflect what has become a popular collecting market

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Turned down by several publishers, Beatrix Potter shouldered the expense of privately printing The Tale of Peter Rabbit with Strangeways Printers in December 1901.