Arms, Armour & Militaria

Bonhams sold their second WWII Spitfire aircraft in the space of seven months last week when businessman Steven Brooks paid £1.58m plus premium for a TR Mark IX specification model at an auction held at the Hendon RAF Museum on April 20. The plane had been estimated to make in the region of £1.5-£2m.

A VOLUNTEER at the Royal Signals Regiment Museum in Blandford, Dorset, has been jailed for 12 months for stealing £33,000 of medals and selling them on eBay.

THIS extremely rare 18th Century Khyber knife was the highlight of the London sale conducted by Norfolk-based sporting gun specialist Holts, where it sold for a surprise £38,000.

LORD Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross collection – the largest in the world – is to go on public display following his £5m donation to the Imperial War Museum. The news comes as the museum has also received a donation from the Art Fund to purchase an important watercolur by Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) at auction.

Lord Ashcroft has been at the centre of a successful bid to recover 96 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, stolen from a museum in New Zealand in December.

Two medals awarded to the same man during the Crimean War, but separated for many years in different collections, have been reunited after selling to the same buyer at Smith & Wilde’s March 21 auction of militaria at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Spink are to put the unrivalled Victoria Cross collection of Lord Ashcroft on display in an 11-day exhibition in their main gallery in April. The exhibition is a forerunner to what is expected to become a permanent public display in two years’ time.

Eleys Auctions in Boston, Lincolnshire have sold by private treaty 43 personal effects of the legendary World War Two double-amputee pilot Douglas Bader.

A JUDGE’S ruling over an antique steel knife has challenged the policy of “Let the Buyer Beware” and may affect auctioneers’ cataloguing practices and their terms and conditions.

At 3ft 21/4in (97cm) long, this exceptionally rare Scottish Highland two-hand sword or claymore dates to the third quarter of the 16th century. So rare is it, in fact, that no other example has appeared on the market in recent years.

This massive silver-gilt shield of Achilles, by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell of London, lost to scholars for the better part of the 20th century, appeared at Sotheby's on December 18 after resurfacing in Belgium.

THIEVES have stolen a collection of war medals Ð including five Victoria Crosses Ð awarded to 12 of New ZealandÕs most highly decorated servicemen. The burglary took place shortly after 1am on December 2 at the Army Museum in Waiouru.

Stella Show Management have said that Antiques at the Armory, the January 18-20 antiques show at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, will go ahead as planned.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

CHARTERHOUSE auctioneers in Sherborne, have broken the auction record for a Military Medal group only two months after the previous one was set.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

Suffolk antique tool auctioneer Tony Murland (10% buyer’s premium) is known for his hyperbolic cataloguing but the description accompanying this nearly 400-year-old horn handled hunting knife was a classic.

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.

NEW YORK’s fairs scene is in some turmoil following a massive rent hike at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the city’s chosen venue for art and antiques fairs.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.