Auctions

A rare poster advertising the return journey of the Titanic is up for auction in Wiltshire.

Street artist Banksy managed to prank the art market by booby trapping his ‘Girl with Balloon’ picture that sold at auction for £1.04m at Sotheby’s last night.

If you enjoy ‘spot the difference’ competitions, a pair of British travel posters coming up at auction in the US will be of immediate interest.

The BBC’s Antiques Roadshow spotlight fell upon the Pilkington's Lancastrian factory this week - just days before an important private collection of these Salford-made lustre wares is offered for sale at auction in Scotland.

Items with royal connections have extra cache for buyers when it comes to desirability and price. Here are four objects with direct connections to noble owners that are currently for sale across dealerships and auctions.

Auction house Christie’s is to auction Albert Einstein’s God Letter – his correspondence to philosopher Erik Gutkind written a year before his death in 1954.

The recently discovered pair to the famous ‘Bainbridge vase’ has sold in Hong Kong today for a premium-inclusive HK$149m (£14.6m). Bidding opened at HK$40 million and steadily climbed as five bidders competed for the lot.

For a man who left school at 15 to start work as a farm labourer and an apprentice printer for a local newspaper in Lincolnshire, Bernie Taupin certainly made the most of his future career.

Louis-Roland Neil (1925-2018) was an influential French journalist and pioneer in the audio-visual world – the man who bought 'Colombo' and 'The Persuaders' to French television viewers. But he had another passion – collecting antique and vintage toys.

Confidence in the contemporary art market has dropped 24% in the first six months of 2018, amid fears of a potential bubble.

The first week of October brings London’s spectacular duo of art fairs, Frieze London and Frieze Masters. But for buyers who do not spend at the high end of these fairs, the seven days around these events offer plenty of opportunities to find art and antiques of many levels around the capital.

Among the plethora of auctions across the UK this week, here are five highlights from upcoming sales, including a Stuart Devlin candelabra at Catherine Southon.