Collectables

Children’s books sold at Forum included a couple of appealing Beatrix Potter items that were first owned by Francis William Clark, who was just two when he was sent a 1912 first of The Tale of Mr Tod.

Hot on the heels of the stands being packed away at the first Olympia Antique Arms Fair – held on September 30 – the date for the second has now been announced.

At the Ink Fair London on October 25-27, Susanne Sculz-Falster Rare Books offers this collection of 241 butterfly and moth prints housed in a 22-drawer collector’s cabinet, right, for £7500.

“My lord, because I know that you will take pleasure in the great victory which our Lord has granted me on this voyage, I write you this letter, by which you will learn how… I crossed to the Indies, where I found many islands populated with innumerable inhabitants; and I have taken possession of all of them…”

Ed Lake works at Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, specialist in 18th and 19th century English literature and history. His parents opened the business in 1969 and it is based in Great Russell Street, across from the British Museum. The shop’s ground floor has been renovated to recreate a 19th-century bookshop.

When the French literature section of the great Bradley Martin library was sold in 1989 (at Sotheby’s Monaco), an 1845 first of 'La Reine Margot' by Alexandre Dumas père was offered as part of a job lot of three of his works that sold for FFr11,500 (£1100).

One of the most sought-after models in the jukebox world is the Wurlitzer Peacock Type 850, designed by Paul Fueller in 1941. It is generally considered the biggest, the showiest and ‘most jukeboxy’ jukebox of them all.

An unusual medals sale has led to an unusual outcome. An application is to be made to export from Canada the Victoria Cross group won by heroic Lieutenant Colonel David Currie after it was bought by a British private collector.

This original case of five silver catheters and three urethral sounds marked for the London maker J Millikan might be a strange offering as a prize outside medical circles.

A letter billed as one of the most important items of ephemera from the Titanic to be offered at auction will go under the hammer at Henry Aldridge & Son on October 21 in Devizes, Wiltshire.

The first book sale of the new season at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) dispersed the travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham, well-known specialist dealers in the British and international antiquarian book trade.

This film poster, below, was designed by the Czech artist Olga Poláčková-Vyleťalová for 'Une Femme Douce' (A Gentle Woman) based on a Dostoevsky short story.