Collectables

Losses narrowed for stamps, coins and medals business Stanley Gibbons in the six months to September 30.

Personal devotional prayer books, known as a Book of Hours, were popular among the wealthy and powerful in late medieval Europe. Illuminated with miniature paintings depicting the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, they were sometimes personalised for the patrons who commissioned them.

Invented in the 19th century but outmoded by word processors then computers, typewriters are now having a resurgence in the collecting world.

The height of fashion nearly three centuries ago, this 18th century doll’s dress caught the eye at C&T’s (20% buyer’s premium) specialist sale in Tunbridge Wells.

Less often seen than Suffragette propaganda and considerably less PC these days, a brass and enamel fob badge for the National League for Opposing Woman had its international admirers at Ipswich auction house Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Possibly dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, a Spanish text manuscript version of Andrea Alciato’s 1531 'Emblemata', the first and most frequently reprinted emblem book, sold for $9000 (£7030) at Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in New York.

Book dealer John Lawson joined EM Lawson & Co, the firm that his father had started at Sutton Coldfield in 1921, when he was demobbed from national service in the RAF in 1952.

Differing echoes of the First World War attracted bidders at Dominic Winter’s (20% buyer’s premium) Cirencester auction in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

The leading contenders in the December 12 General Election are struggling to land any meaningful blows on each other, despite being more than happy to be photographed in boxing rings.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Original watercolours intended for pioneering, unpublished work are now highly valued

Bid to £32,000 in a Gloucestershire auction was a 1599, first Latin edition of the Dutch traveller and explorer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Navigatio ac itinerarium…

The huge and ongoing task of cataloguing thousands of cigarette cards and other ephemera from a deceased collector’s home – he had walls pasted with beer mats instead of wallpaper – paid off for Bristol auctioneer Gavin Aplin.

A group of “historically important” watercolour and pencil drawings of the London Blitz sparked a bidding war at Cirencester saleroom Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Work featuring the boy wizard Harry Potter is a familiar sight at the PBFA’s annual Christmas event

Two music-makers caught the eye, or rather ear, at Adam Partridge’s (20% buyer’s premium) Macclesfield sale.