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FOUND lying face down in the attic of a local house, apparently unloved, the pastel portrait of a young girl reading a book seen right was the sleeper that awoke to a six-figure bid in an April 3 sale that gave Dennis Auction Service of Stewartsville, New Jersey, their first ever $1m sale total.

SPECIALIST firearms saleroom, Rock Island Auctions of Moline, Illinois, sold over 2800 lots for a total of $5.3m (£3m) in their April 17-19 event. Among the higher priced weapons were three prototype or experimental pistols by Mauser and Walther.

PICTURES in a May 19 sale held by Doyles of New York included a very large (6ft 4 1/2in x 4ft 1in (1.93 x 125m) oil on panel after Andrea del Sarto's Porta Pinti Madonna.

IN the 18th century, it was widely believed that meteorites found on Earth were pieces of the moon that had been blasted into space by volcanic eruption. We now know that almost all meteorites come from the asteroid belt and that it was the pummelling that the moon received in the early years of the formation of our solar system that allowed some chunks of moon rock to escape the moon’s gravitational influence and, periodically, find their way to Earth.

TWO of the more successful lots from a May 14 sale of American and European pictures held in Boston by Skinners are seen here.

DECORATED manuscripts known as fraktur, made in various parts of America but primarily associated with Pennsylvania’s German communities, are something very little known in Britain, but on the home auction scene they are big money spinners indeed, as the example from an April 24 Americana sale held by Freemans of Philadelphia shows.

OVER the weekend of May 15-16, the Annapolis (Maryland) doll specialists, Theriault’s, sold $3m worth of dolls and automata in a Las Vegas sale that for the first time introduced live Internet bidding.

AT a sale of modernist posters held by Swanns on May 10, the New York cataloguers drew attention to the influence on Ludwig Hohlwein of the work of the Beggarstaffs.

OVER 600 lots of ‘Old Master through Contemporary Prints’ were offered by Swanns on May 6 and in the former category, Dürer and Rembrandt figured prominently among the higher priced lots.

DECORATIVE pâte-sur-pâte has been selling well recently and an example of the work produced by Louis Marc Emmanuel Solon for Mintons was featured on the cover of the catalogue produced by Freemans of Philadelphia for their March 20-21 sale of English and Continental furniture and works of art, and it duly produced one of this special Spring sale’s better results.

THE controversial ‘Anglo Saxon’ cross shaft, once hailed as a major discovery by London dealer Rupert Wace, but now blighted by academic opinion, failed to attract a bid when offered by Sotheby’s New York on June 9 with a $30,000-50,000 estimate.

FLORIDA art fair Palm Beach Contemporary is to be known as PalmBeach3 for its next staging at the Palm Beach County Convention Center from January 13 to 17, 2005. The name has been chosen to reflect the new three-part structure of the event.

SOLD for $1300 (£730) in a May 20 sale held by Freemans of Philadelphia was a set in original wrappers of all eight issues of The Savoy (1896) with its cover designs and other illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.

TWO records of witchcraft trials in 17th century Lübeck were among the more successful lots in an April 19 sale held by Swanns of New York.

ONE of the most unusual disputes concerning an item sold at auction comes full circle on Wednesday, with the object being put up for sale once more.

CHRISTIE’S have announced that as well as appointing Old Master dealers Hall and Knight as international directors, they have also acquired the firm’s New York galleries.

A children’s and illustrated sale held by Pacific Book Auctions of San Francisco on May 13 included a collection of Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

THE first part of the Maurice F. Neville collection of modern literature, which sold for a premium-inclusive $5.22m (£2.95m) at Sotheby’s New York on April 13, was primarily but certainly not wholly focused on the work of American writers. Seen here are two of the English books that brought strong results.

One of the more dramatic results seen at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer's premium) English Country House sale on April 7 in New York was the $130,000 (£70,650) paid by a private collector for this English needlework portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, c.1580, 4 3/4 x 4 1/2in (12 x 11.4cm), which had been estimated at a modest $8000-12,000.

AUCTION history was duly made at Sotheby’s New York on the evening of Wednesday, May 5 when Picasso’s iconic 1905 Rose Period canvas, Garçon à la Pipe, was knocked down for a hammer price of $93m (£54.7m), making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.