Collectables

Antique dolls supremo Judy Bebber has been organising the biannual Kensington Doll Show at Kensington Town Hall for 20 years.

Compiled by J Wells Kelly and published in San Francisco in 1862, a rare copy of the First Directory of Nevada Territory…, which was worn, dry and splitting but in original, leather-backed printed boards, sold for $6500 (£5080) in a PBA Galleries sale of April 20.

Catch of the day at Cockermouth auctioneers Mitchells’ (20% buyer’s premium) sporting sale on April 8 was a cast of a salmon. The 48lb fish, cast by Mallochs of Perth, was estimated at £1800-2000 but was reeled in by a Scottish enthusiast at £5200.

Best round scores in the most recent PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) golfing sale came with the appearance of a group of the papers of golfing historian and collector CB Clapcott.

Gustave Vichy was probably the most accomplished manufacturer of automata in fin de siècle France. A prime example of his art is putting in an appearance at the May 20 sale of Auction Team Breker in Cologne.

The antiquarian book trade has lost two well-known faces with the deaths of Frank Herrmann and Roy Davids.

The biannual National Vintage Fishing Tackle Fair at the Redditch Sports Centre in Redditch on Sunday, May 14, which has been fully booked for months, is the last to be held at this venue in its 13 years of existence, as the centre is closing.

“We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold” are the opening words of Hunter S Thompson’s notorious and loosely autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing Las Vegas…

Reversing the usual pattern where it is an author’s first book that makes the big money, it is the last of the 38 books featuring Richmal Crompton’s most famous children’s book creation that has for many years been one of the most expensive purchases for collectors.

If you are interested in Chinese mother-of-pearl gaming counters then it’s a pretty good bet that the name Bill Neal will also come up.

The Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association is to rebrand its young booksellers’ apprenticeship scheme as a training programme following a change in employment law.

A £100 Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword, one of 23 awarded to captains who fought at Trafalgar, sold for $235,000 (£173,000), plus 15% buyer’s premium, to one of six phone bidders competing at James D Julia in Fairfield, Maine, on April 11.

Networking is far more than a good chinwag. As Baldwin’s of St James’s medal specialist Mark Smith explains, it can also be good business.

From Arthur Rackham to Gerald Scarfe, there is a burgeoning market for original illustration art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For the second year running, two major events – the ABA’s London International Antiquarian Book Fair, running from June 1-3 at the National Hall, Olympia, and the London International Book Fair organised by the PBFA at the ILEC Conference Centre in SW6 on June 2-3 – will run under the marketing umbrella Rare Books London.

Literary anniversaries are a good story to tell to potential sellers but do they bring greater interest and greater prices?

The name of William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) is enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Definition: “Ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated in design or construction”.

A selection of stand-out results achieved at auctions in the UK and abroad.