Auctioneers

Fellows is now the leading UK regional auctioneer by hammer total after recording overall sales of £17m in 2017.

Coin-grading firm The Certified Collectibles Group (CCG) has expanded again in the UK and will open an office in London in April on the third floor of dealership Spink’s headquarters.

A small collection of 18th century European porcelain offered by Reeman Dansie in Colchester included this Meissen teapot and cover c.1725.

A country house library in south-west Scotland was the source of an album of 19th century photographs of India that provided a Valentine’s Day surprise at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh.

Another classic piece of English furniture to go well above expectations was a Regency mahogany window seat in the style of George Bullock offered by the Cumbrian firm 1818 Auctioneers (17/12% buyer’s premium).

Experimental work by the Czech Expressionist Ernest Neuschul (1895-1968) chimed with current tastes in a sell-out studio sale in Somerset.

This late 19th century ‘natural history’ specimen purports to be the mummified body of a creature that was half mammal and half fish.

As with the overall market, Dutch furniture is much less popular than it once was and the 18th century walnut, floral marquetry and ivory-inlaid bombé bureau cabinet, below, had a couple of condition problems for bidders at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium).

This oil painting of the RMS Queen Mary, below, by marine painter William McDowell (1888-1950) was taken to a multi-estimate £12,000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

A selection of classic car stand-out lots at upcoming UK sales.

Outsold, predictably enough, by an 18th-19th century Chinese vase, two late 19th century Persian moulded pottery tiles were the eye-catchers among a buoyant Asian works of art section at Billingshurst auction house Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

A signed and inscribed first edition of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has hopes of selling for as much as $100,000 in Heritage Auctions’ Rare Book auction on March 7 in New York.

Private material sourced from old estates helped Gloucestershire saleroom Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) get the year off to a positive start.

The rise of the ‘young classics’ has helped the market become accessible to investors across all prices. Nigel Boothman talks to auctioneers and experts about accelerating trends for 2018. He also looks at the motorbikes and automobilia markets.