Collectables

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

A first portion of the library of the late Eric Gerald Stanley, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, featured in a recent auction at Mallams.

Albrecht Dürer’s medal dedicated to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, is among the most important medals of the Northern Renaissance. As only four are known to commerce, the appearance of one for sale is significant.

Underpinned by an 81-lot consignment from the estate of the late Fred Sansome, a famous figure in the world of model railways, the Transport Sale at Dreweatts (25% buyer’s premium) was led by scratch-built locomotives by equally revered names.

A collection of 18th and 19th century mementoes of love and death – “the likes of which we are unlikely to ever see again” according to specialist Eric Knowles – brought a white-glove success at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium).

Graham Greene was a star turn when a second portion of the famed ‘Mystery Fiction’ collections and stock of Otto Penzler, proprietor of Manhattan’s ‘Mysterious Bookshop’, came to auction in New York on September 5.

Two early handmade Valentines from the Judith Howard collection of mourning jewellery, greeting cards andand other ephemera drew demand at Hansons latest sale at Bishton Hall, Staffordshire.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from October 15-25, 2019.

In the latest of our occasional series of collector interviews, we talk to Graham Bowers, who buys items associated with Napoleon Bonaparte and describes himself as being “under the Corsican wizard’s spell”.

One exceptional and very successful lot in a recent Yorkshire sale focused on penal reforms on the far side of the world.

Several records were broken when all 442 lots in the Glynn & Suzanne Crain science-fiction collection sold in a US auction on August 13-14.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

A fine private collection amassed in the 1960s provided the base for the inaugural Russian Coins & Historical Medals sale held by Dix Noonan Webb (24% buyer’s premium).

The first printed copy of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica was published in Strasbourg as early as c.1475 with subsequent versions printed in Vienna (1513), Strasbourg again (1500), Haguenau (1506), Paris (1544) and Antwerp (1550).

This Resolution and Adventure medal is one of 2000 that were commissioned by the British Admiralty ahead of James Cook’s Second Voyage.

Punching well above its weight, a 9ct gold Lonsdale Championship boxing trophy presented to legendary Glaswegian champion Benny Lynch was the top draw at Fellows’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale in Birmingham.

The most famous book from the first years of printing using moveable type is the Bible produced by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz in the mid-1450s, but in Hamburg on November 25 Ketterer Kunst will be offering another very rare and early Bible.

MADAM – I was pleased to see the report in ATG No 2410 on the cricket collection sold by the Canterbury Auction Galleries.