Collectables

The script for the very first Doctor Who episode owned by the first actor to play the role is coming up at auction in the West Midlands.

An album of Indian photographs sold for £32,000 in Edinburgh provided ATG’s Pick of the Week in the previous issue (No 2331), but there was much more on offer in that 550-lot Scottish sale.

A single-owner collection of Tri-ang and other British toys will go under the hammer in what has been described as the largest of its type to come to auction.

Commonly known as a What The Butler Saw machine, a late 19th-early 20th century Mutoscope was the most alluring of a consignment of a collection of amusement arcade machines offered at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium).

Sold for $28,000 (£20,820) by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on December 5 was this original drawing by Ralph Steadman for the 1971 first appearance of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Running to some 300pp and described by the auctioneers as “a most enchanting album, redolent of Jane Austen and her world”, a scrapbook compilation of paper cut-outs, views and figural studies, sold for £1550 in a general sale held in Sussex.

A Parisian Book of Hours dating to c.1440-50 was among illuminated or decorated manuscripts sold during in the closing weeks of 2017.

Outselling much of the sort of furniture its owner could have worked on, an 18th century carpenter’s oak tool chest on stand was among the pleasant surprises for vendors at the opening sale of the year at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

German-made painted wood Noah’s arks, appealing to folk art and toy collectors alike, don’t get much better than the mid- 19th century example sold at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

The many voyages made in search of the lost Franklin expedition feature strongly in another spotlight on polar exploration covering sales in London and New York. The splendid Martin Greene library again provides notable highlights.

Under the overall command of James Clark Ross, one of the earlier major expeditions to the Antarctic regions focused principally on magnetic and geographical investigations – but others aboard had different priorities.