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The diverse collection of Jeffrey M Kaplan is making various appearances under the hammer this spring.

Among the picture highlights of Peter Wilson’s (24% buyer’s premium) Fine Art Sale on March 2 in Nantwich was a coastal sunset scene by prolific Birkenhead artist Samuel John Lamorna Birch (1869-1955).

A crease that runs around the lower part of the dust jacket detracts somewhat from the appeal of a first impression copy of the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books, Casino Royale of 1953, but it sold for £16,000 in a March 1 sale held by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

A coin sold in the Dix Noonan Webb (20% buyer’s premium) auction on March 15 is a poignant reminder of the mysterious death of the Princes in the Tower.

Furniture takes a rare top spot despite numerous and varied delights at Dorchester auction

Past playthings by a host of famous vintage toy manufacturers will feature in the next Signature sale of Toys and Trains held by the specialist auction house Bertoia in Vineland, New Jersey, on March 25.

The legal impasse surrounding the restitution of thousands of historical documents and manuscripts from the scandal-hit Aristophil investment scheme was finally broken last week.

Since its launch in 2002 the TEFAF Art Market Report has established itself as the art and antiques trade’s key annual barometer of size and trends.

Typewriters on which famous books came into existence have featured on these pages before, but not for some time – and certainly not machines of a kind that that continue to be used by their owner to this day.

The Pittsfield, Massachusetts, auction house Fontaine’s has a track record of selling good examples of horology and has achieved some very high prices recently for elaborate English clocks made for the Chinese market.

A select sale of just 31 lots of Asian art assembled by a Japanese collector and his sons raised a recordbreaking $262.8m (£215.5m) at Christie’s New York on March 15. It made more in a single evening than any New York Asian sale series.

It is not often that market economists agree, and so it goes with the TEFAF Art Market Report’s current and previous authors. Economics is, after all, not an exact science and analysing a market as opaque as art and antiques is certainly problematic.

The taxidermy market continues to grow – particularly for showpiece lots such as the Bengal tiger’s head offered at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium) of Winchester on February 8.