Collectables

The original Skegness Is So Bracing showing the ‘Jolly Fisherman’ dancing along a beach has become one of the most famous railway posters in the world.

Roger Vadim’s cult classic film 'Barbarella' starring Jane Fonda was released in 1968.

A landlord and tenancy agreement signed by Freddie Mercury in 1986 was among the highlights of the Autographs and Memorabilia at Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium).

The 1968 Mexico Summer Olympics were the first Games to be staged in Latin America.

Roman Cieślewicz (1930-96) and Jan Lenica (1928-2001) were both founders of the Polish School of Posters, the influential and creative artistic movement that sprang up under strict Soviet rule.

Further to your report on the extremely rare Plate 77 Penny Red, offered for sale at a tempting £650,000 (News Digest, ATG No 2652), it might be of interest to readers who are neither philatelists, nor postal historians, to note that it was the imperforate Penny Red which replaced the Penny Black in February 1841, not the perforated Penny Red, like the example illustrated.

A preserved and framed collection with a great provenance dispersed at auction showed the wider strength of a market often dominated by the familiar stars

First edition of key Mormon work lists Joseph Smith as ‘author and proprietor’ of text not ‘translator’

Carved wooden sculptural fragments are a market strength.

The Fonsie Mealy Chatsworth Summer Rare Books & Collectables Sale on July 30-31 includes a private collection of works by Jack B Yeats, The Cuala Press and modern Irish and English literature.

Only 29 books from the library of John Keats are recorded - among them a 1679 printing of the collected works of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser given to him by the artist Joseph Severn (1793-1879).

A medal awarded to a Suffragette for going on hunger strike hammered down for £17,000 on June 7 at Bonhams (plus 28% buyer’s premium).