Collectables

A rare early photographic instrument – bought for a song by a member of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip team – sold for £20,000 at Lacy Scott & Knight (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds on May 13.

Next month’s 'London International Antiquarian Book Fair' at the National Hall, Olympia on June 1-3 will be the last held at the West Kensington venue.

It has been 50 years since the Beatles released their eighth studio album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to universal acclaim.

The London International Premier Fair (June 2-3) is the flagship book fair of the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).

Early Dutch discoveries in Australia and those made in Tasmania and New Zealand on Abel Tasman’s first voyage are outlined in a 1659 wall-map by the Amsterdam cartographer Joan Blaeu (1596-1673).

The late Hubert Dingwall began a lifetime of book collecting in 1935 with the purchase of a vellum bound copy of the second part only of a 1697 Antwerp edition of Don Quixote for one shilling and sixpence.

DEAR EDITOR – Without wishing to appear nit-picking (really, I don’t) the article in your militaria special that references the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund Sword (ATG No 2290) describes Captain Rutherford as US-born, in 1764.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

An unexpected highlight of an April 28-29 sale held by Brussels saleroom The Romantic Agony (24% buyer’s premium), was a leaf from an illuminated manuscript.

The big surprise at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood'’s April 11-12 sale at Exeter was this 17th-18th century Tyrolean wood and gilt crucifix.

If you don’t know which epic film opens with the phrase ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….’ then you may just be living on a different planet.

Finely bound sets featured in the high spots ofa third Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of modern literature from the Maurice Neville library held on April 25.

Artwork produced for the much-loved ‘Ladybird’ books by the late John Berry (1920-2009) were offered by Tennants (18.5% buyer’s premium) on April 28.

Containing over 150pp of notes and fragmentary drafts for two of her novels and a play, an autograph notebook used by Agatha Christie while in Baghdad around 1948 – perhaps while travelling with her husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan – sold for $15,000 (£11,625) in a Swann Auction Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 4.

Coming up in early June are the two stalwart fairs of the London antiquarian book trade: 'The London International Antiquarian Book Fair', hosted by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABA), and 'The London International Premier Fair', hosted by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).