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Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull has been bought by a group of anonymous investors, which apparently includes himself, for its asking price of £50m.

NOBLE Investments, the publicly listed coins company and owners of Baldwin’s auctioneers, have branched out into the stamps market.

Leyburn auctioneers Tennants have standardised their buyer’s premium rates across their sales.

OLD film footage of youngsters playing amid the rubble of the Blitz-ravaged London showed that even in our darkest hour war could be turned into a game.

A substantial reward is being offered for the return of a George III ormolu and white marble table clock by Matthew Boulton stolen from Knightsbridge dealership Hotspur on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 22.

Kent’s Canterbury Auction Galleries were one of the few salerooms to hold a good quality art and antiques sale in August.

As of September 1, the Penkridge Salerooms come under new ownership.

Sotheby’s match Christie’s with 25% premium on lots sold below £10,000

DUBLIN auctioneers James Adam have negotiated a €3.5m (£2.4m) sale of remarkable papers setting a record for a single transaction of documents relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

In the same way that Americans hold any material relating to the Pilgrim Fathers in the highest esteem, so anything associated with Australia’s earliest European settlers carries a huge premium for its domestic market.

For the fifth year running the Auctioneers and Dealers will square up to each other at the Bank of England sports ground in Roehampton, south west London, for their annual football match.

New York to hold liquor auctions

Pictured here is a 16th century gold ring that was stolen from Somerset County Museum in Taunton on either August 6 or 7.

JUDITH Miller, the face of the most successful antiques book publishing operation, is returning to the publishers where she started out in 1979.

BOOMING art auctions and a massive growth in private sales have helped Sotheby’s to another set of record totals – this time for the first six months of 2007.

ROGUE bidder Mark Wilson will be subject to criminal prosecution if he continues his spree, Nottingham Insolvency Court has ruled.

Maria Felix (1914-2002), born one of 16 children in the small Mexican town of Sonora, became an icon during the golden age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and was generally acknowledged as the most beautiful face in its history.

Bonhams have announced a major strengthening and enlargement of the ceramics department at their New Bond Street rooms with the immediate appointment of two former Sotheby’s specialists.

It was catalogued as Bow c.1760 but this English porcelain coffee cup seen at Bamfords of Derby on July 25 was identified as belonging to a much rarer class of porcelain associated with Charles Gouyn and a short-lived London concern in St James’s.

Half-yearly Paris figures to August showed Christie’s consolidating their lead with sales of €100.3m (£67.3m), nearly twice as much as their nearest rivals, ArtCurial.