Collectables

An unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet was this set of four early real tennis rackets. They came from a client in the North of England and had been owned by the family for many years.

Early children’s books, many from a single collection formed by the late Mary Joy Sanger, provided a principal attraction in a February 27 sale held in Penzance by David Lay (18% buyer’s premium).

An 80-lot James Bond collection offeredin a recent Lincolnshire sale had been formed over a 40-year period.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 20-29, 2018.

The first week of March ended with a flurry of sales in both the UK and the US. Together they brought a number of exceptional results.

A previously unknown copy of the Golden Age comic that heralds the arrival of Batman sold for a premium-inclusive $569,000 (£410,000) in York, Pennsylvania last week.

A first English edition of Charlotte Bernhardi’s translation of her father, Admiral Krusenstern’s Memoir… of his 1803-06 circumnavigation of the globe was one of the rarer items offered at Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 20.

Paul Comolera (1818-97) was one of a series of prominent sculptors who travelled to work in Stoke-on-Trent at a time of political upheaval in France.

Magazine by ‘heathen staff’ sells for 10-times top estimate in the city where it was produced...

A number of books on plastic surgery featured in a recent Californian sale including an 1833, first English edition of Johann F Dieffenbach’s Surgical Observations on the Restoration of the Nose.

One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.

Selling at $400,000 (£285,715), the original cover artwork for the 100th issue of Amazing Spider-Man comic led a recent three-day American comic and comic artwork auction that raised a total of around $7.2m (£5.14m).

‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”

Flash from the past at the Diss rooms of TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

Ephemera Society member Robertino Poposki has been awarded the silver prize in the ephemera class at the Spring Stampex 2018, organised by the Association of British Philatelic Societies.

Dwarfed as they were by the £440,000 oil of St John the Evangelist (see ATG last week, No 2332), a number of other lots helped to make Holloway’s (20% buyer’s premium) first major sale of the year in Banbury on February 27 an event to remember.