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A 1937 FIRST edition of The Hobbit was always likely to be the big story in the April 14 books and collectables sale held by David Lay of Penzance. In a jacket with some chips and losses, notably towards the spine ends, and showing an ink correction to the mis-spelt version of Charles Dodgson’s name on the back flap, it duly sold at £10,500.

RONALD W. Coleby of Houghton in Cumbria, who died last year, just a week after completing the memoir of his wife that had occupied much of his time in recent years, became a full-time bookseller in 1972, specialising in hunting, shooting and, above all, fishing.

THE opening map and atlas section of the Bonhams Bath sale of April 26 included a copy in rebacked contemporary calf of the first and only published volume of the 1675 first edition of John Ogilby’s Britannia with its general map and 100 engraved strip road maps, at £7000.

ALREADY well-known for their two selling exhibitions a year, The Antique Trader, who work out of The Millinery Works, 85/87 Southgate Road in Islington, London N1, should consolidate their reputation for commercial yet well- researched shows with The Arts and Crafts Movement: The Core Years 1880-1910 which runs from June 2 to 27.

ARCHITECTURAL antiques and stained glass specialist Drew Pritchard is holding a trade and professional open day on Saturday June 19 to officially mark his company’s move into splendid new showrooms and workshops at St. George’s Church, Church Walks, Llandudno in North Wales.

COLLECTORS who love the art of L.S. Lowry but can only afford Helen Bradley (1900-1979) were presented with the picture of their dreams when this 11 by 14in (27 x 36cm) oil, right, of the momentous and inspirational meeting between Lowry and Bradley outside the 1955 Saddleworth Art Group’s Exhibition came up for sale at the Chichester rooms of Henry Adams (15% buyer’s premium) on April 28.

DIX Noonan Webb’s March 17 sale offered exactly 1700 lots, making for a very long day. But just about every branch of numismatic endeavour was catered for. So comprehensive was this sale that only a flavour of the dispersal can be covered here.

NEARLY 1300 lots were offered by Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff in an April 21 sale of sports memorabilia and among the soccer programmes, there was a bit of a shock when a 1945 programme for a Newport County v Chelsea match, valued at £30-40, was bid to £2600!

VAST, and certainly imposing, it will be impossible to miss the centrepiece of a selling exhibition The Cabinet & Other Notables which will be held at The Country Seat, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire from May 21 to June 11.

THIS spring season Spink’s have had some hard-hitting sales and it has to be said that the market for the best British material has become very buoyant over the last year or so.

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.

THE Bonhams empire has embraced the notion of niche markets in pragmatic fashion, each of the various outposts having its own speciality – while the Scottish branch, which sells across the range of the market, breaks its sales into single specialist offerings. On March 18 Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) offered 375 pieces of jewellery and silver with the following day’s sale comprising 198 items of Asian art, ceramics and glass.

Pictured right is one of two major pieces of Georg Jensen silver stolen in a raid on Denmark’s National Art Gallery in the early hours of May 2. The thieves involved got away with an estimated £70,000 worth of silver that formed part of an exhibition featuring the work of the celebrated Danish silversmith.

THIS fine Nantgarw porcelain plate, right, once thought to be painted by Thomas Baxter and traditionally known as the ‘Three Graces’, is part of a collection of porcelain to be offered by Worcestershire auctioneers Philip Serrell on May 20.

ONE might not have thought that a Glaswegian enamelled devotional triptych was the easiest of items to estimate, but Lyon & Turnbull (17.5/10% buyer's premium) specialist John Mackie had a number of reference points when cataloguing the piece shown right for the decorative arts sale in Edinburgh on April 21.

THE jewellery dealer targeted by a gang at Sandown Park Fair on April 27 has told the Antiques Trade Gazette it was the second attack on him in as little as two weeks.

IN the centennial year of his birth in 1904, a provenance to George Formby came with the sale of a ukelele which sold for £1750 (estimate £100-150) at Gorringes Lewes sale on April 27. The C.F. Martin & Co. 3K lte ukelele was bought by Bernard Dyke, a past president of the George Formby Society. The uke came to sale via the vendor’s father, an Arthur Rank chairman in the late 30s/early 40s to whom George presented it at a film preview at a Rank cinema in Essex.

INSURERS AXA Art and NFU Mutual have published a new booklet giving advice to owners of fine art about how to minimise damage to their property and possessions.

AS USUAL at the March 18-19 sale held by Neales (15% buyer's premium), the spring event was led in price terms by furniture – but in terms of selling rates and the degree of competition in the room, the Nottingham event was more notable for the smalls and collectables.

RUSSIAN interest in their own heritage propelled the prices of two Imperial Russian subjects in the Albion collection, sold at Bonhams' (19.5/10% buyer's premium) New Bond Street rooms on April 22, to very high levels.