Collectables

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

A classic SAS beige beret from the Second World War has sold for what is believed to be a record-breaking £17,500 hammer price.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Troubling subjects to today’s society as they may be, promotional materials for tobacco, alcohol, chocolates and petrol from the 19th and early 20th centuries remain a popular choice for collectors.

Pitched at £15,000-25,000, a rare 16th century French work made its lower estimate at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium).

The pictorial spread and designer binding shown here feature in a work by the celebrated French-Swiss architect and designer, Le Corbusier.

An 1831, third (first illustrated) edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a version that not only contained a new introduction but added a new chapter to that famous work, sold for £2800 in a Norfolk sale.

Billed as the first music to be both composed and printed in the New World, Juan Navarro’s setting of '…Quatuor passions Christi' was one of several items of Mexican origin to do well in a recent Americana sale.

A manuscript for Rebecca and a favourite typewriter were among the top lots in a collection of objects and ephemera once owned by author and playwright Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) sold at Rowley’s in Ely (22.5% buyer’s premium).

A flying log book belonging to one of the female pilots of the Air Training Auxiliary (ATA) who became famous for ferrying planes in the Second World War has been sold at Kent saleroom C&T.

Sent to auction by a descendant, two partly broken and disbound journals relating to the early years in the naval career of William Chimmo (1828-91) proved an unexpected success in a recent South Cerney sale.

Ian Fleming firsts in a Swann of New York sale of May 14 will include a copy of Goldfinger of 1959 inscribed to a famous golfer, Henry Cotton, estimated at $12,000-18,000 (£9250- 13,850).

MADAM – I have noticed an increasing penchant for editors, advertisers and auction companies to use the term ‘Penny Farthing’ in the pages of ATG when in fact they should be using the term ‘Ordinary Bicycle’, or, if there is a need to be more descriptive, ‘High Bicycle’.

A library focused on Antarctic exploration gave a New Zealand saleroom one of its more successful book and manuscript auctions since the company’s foundation in 2011.

MADAM – Robert Vince asks an interesting question of the tin-printed Gilbert Rae show-card (Letters, ATG No 2389).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 8-15, 2019.