Collectables

Stand-out lot in the Julien’s auction on November 14 in Beverly Hills is a Brooklyn Dodgers coaching uniform worn by Babe Ruth, America’s baseball hero. It comes from a 350-piece private collection amassed over 30 years.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Celtic legend Tommy Gemmell’s boots from the 1967 European Cup final went under the hammer at Glasgow auction house McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) on July 19. They doubled the lower estimate, selling at £14,000.

Dealer Manfred Schotten “grew up skiing in Bavaria, started to play golf, was taken fly-fishing by friends and started noticing sporting antiques and memorabilia. This is when it really started.”

Many talented footballers had their careers interrupted or even curtailed by the world wars. Although Allenby Chilton is not exactly a household name, not many players featured in both a Manchester United title-winning side and the D-Day Normandy landings.

A group of five rare bronzes by Joseph Durham (1814- 77) from the Gould collection will be offered at The Canterbury Auction Galleries on November 26-27.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the football league in Scotland has not always been dominated by Celtic and Rangers. The last time a team outside the Old Firm won the title was Aberdeen in 1985.

A yellow Tour de France jersey once worn in the gruelling race by the legendary Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx (b.1945) sold for a mid-estimate hammer price of £7000 at Rogers Jones (18% buyer’s premium inc VAT) on June 14.

Rugby is said to be akin to a religion in Wales and Cardiff saleroom Rogers Jones (18% buyer’s premium inc VAT) has scored impressively in recent years with related lots – such as the auction record for a shirt.

This late 9ct gold Football League medal was awarded to Billy Bassett (1869-1937), one of the best-known footballers of the late Victorian era.

From a 5000-year-old pictographic tablet to a 5th century bible leaf - a small but fascinating London auction.

Boosted by the ‘wrong therefore rare’ factor – so important in the world of collectables – a 1977 British quad film poster for the first Star Wars film took top billing in a 250-lot specialist sale at Ewbank’s (24% buyer’s premium).

The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance

Hindman Auctions will be selling a Midwestern collector’s ensemble of rare books in an 85 lot auction in Chicago on November 5.

A final selection of works from the London summer sale of books from the Fox Pointe Manor library* includes a gruesome account of London’s ‘Great Plague’.

A model example of trans-European trucking, this diecast van advertising a Swiss company was made in Italy and sold to a German buyer at the Runcorn rooms of British Toy Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

How very different London’s Euston station looks in this coloured aquatint from a copy of Thomas Talbot Bury’s 'Six Coloured Views on the London and Birmingham Railway'.

Very different works by Daniel Defoe featured in an online summer sale in London: one famous, the other far removed in its subject matter and probably little known.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 17-October 4, 2019.