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“Buyers want to get back in action after the Christmas holiday,” said Darryl Kirk, saleroom manager at Unique Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium), after 95% of the 1300 lots offered on New Year’s Day got away.

This ‘Goliath’ carriage clock, below, was offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) in Taunton.

Sold as part of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) sale to benefit the charity House of Illustration, and in partnership with both the saleroom and Winsor & Newton, was a group of 33 lots gathered together under the heading First Editions Re-Covered.

One outcome of Master Drawings New York’s expansion to take in paintings and sculpture as well as works on paper is the inclusion this year of Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, specialist in sculpture and works of art.

Among the works that David Tunick, a longstanding MDNY exhibitor, will be showing this year at his gallery on East 69th Street is this large 18 x 14in (45.5 x 35.5 cm) watercolour over pencil by John Robert Cozens.

Good times ahead were predicted by Guy Schooling, chairman of Sworders (23% buyer’s premium), after the January 9 Homes & Interiors sale at Stansted Mountfitchet which was topped by a WAS Benson brass mantel clock.

A classic metaphysical fantasy novel that sold poorly when first issued but later influenced the works of CS Lewis and gained many admirers, A Voyage to Arcturus is the work of David Lindsay.

For the Fine Art Society in Edinburgh, the year kicks off with an exhibition of 20th century printmaking.

Bid to a rather higher than suggested £1300 in a Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) sale of December 8 in Crewkerne were two early 19th century works on water meadows.

Four unusual collections caught the eye, if not always the cash, at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer's premium).

An extensive collection with Astor family provenance offered at auction was billed as best of its type in more than 20 years.

Sotheby’s sale of 80 pieces of memorabilia relating to Lord Horatio Nelson featured a return to the saleroom of many lots acquired by the ‘Princely’ vendor in 2005.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period January 11-17, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

On the basis that it’s never too late for chocolate, or indeed beer, a belated report from BBR’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale of advertising memorabilia at Elsecar.

Jill Newhouse, a New York dealer with a gallery on East 81st Street, is a veteran of Master Drawings New York, having taken part for many years.

A precedent-setting legal dispute over a $10m (£7.2m) fee relating to the 2014 sale of a $210m Paul Gauguin painting was won by auctioneer-turned-art adviser Simon de Pury last week, despite him only having a gentleman’s agreement. We ask whether such agreements are still valid in today's art market?

The annual TEFAF art market report has been scrapped in favour of a number of smaller, focused reports.

London is to host a viewing of a small oil painting by Paul Cézanne ahead of its sale in the US.

Two of the first sales of 2018 suggest that toasts to the future can be drunk from half-full, rather than half-empty, Georgian rummers.

Dr Who fans can start collecting early this year with a series of lots from the cult science-fiction show going under the hammer in January.