Arms, Armour & Militaria

A militaria section at Lawrences’ (15% buyer's premium) October 28-19 sale featured a quality, privately entered, 12-lot cache of weapons which suffered not one casualty and racked up a £30,000 total.

BUYING and selling antique swords may soon become illegal in Scotland. As part of proposals to tackle knife crime North of the Border, Scotland’s First Minister, Jack McConnell, announced his intention to ban the sale of swords and introduce a licence for the sale of non-domestic knives.

IN September 1878, as it became clear that the Newbury Borough Fire Brigade was suffering from a lack of men and equipment, around 20 determined tradesmen decided to take matters into their own hands and to form a volunteer fire brigade. After some debate by the town’s Watch Committee, the auxiliary brigade won a majority approval.

THE well advertised sale of Railwayana & Military Memorabilia was held in H.J Pugh & Co’s Ledbury salerooms on the 13th October and was another successful auction.

H.J. PUGH & Co. of Ledbury (5% buyer's premium) will be offering a selection of Railwayana, Military Memorabilia and Other Collectables at auction on Saturday 13th November.

BILLED as the top gun on the catalogue cover of the September 1 sales at Lewes arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer's premium), this c.1649 German or Dutch 34-bore wheel lock pistol lived up to its reputation.

A POSTER sale held by Swanns of New York on August 4 was strong on recruitment and propaganda posters of WWI and WWII. A condition-A copy of “the best known American poster of all time”, the famous Uncle Sam image of 1917 seen top right, was sold at $9000 (£4950). Based on the well-known British poster featuring Lord Kitchener, it was originally produced by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg as a magazine cover and is in fact a self-portrait of the artist.

Badges by Philip Atwood, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714150142 £7.99sb AMONG the British Museum’s priceless antiquities is the museum’s collection of some 12,000 badges. A small, hard-to-find exhibition, showing at the museum until January 16, presents just a tiny fraction of this archive.

GIVEN Hitler’s order to execute any commando captured during WWII, it was unusual for British special forces to wear much in the way of identification. That goes some way to explaining the rarity of this cloth badge (or formation sign) seen at a postal auction conducted by Bosley’s (15% buyer’s premium) on July 21.

AS one of Keys of Aylsham's (10% buyer's premium) huge, six-a-year, sales aimed squarely at collectors, the strengths of this 1423-lot outing on June 17-18 lay in toys and militaria.

BEFORE the acceptance of the clay pigeon (patented in 1880) as the most suitable target for skeet shooting, there was glass ball shooting. Thought to originate in Britain in the 1830s, but quickly spreading to the United States, shooting at uniform spherical glass target balls was a recognised Victorian pastime that gathered momentum following the invention in 1877 of a trap capable of casting a missile through the air in a long arc.

AN auctioneer contemplating an old boxed set of wooden soldiers complete with faded instructions for war games could be forgiven for steering it towards the toy section, or even a specialist toy sale.

SPECIALIST firearms saleroom, Rock Island Auctions of Moline, Illinois, sold over 2800 lots for a total of $5.3m (£3m) in their April 17-19 event. Among the higher priced weapons were three prototype or experimental pistols by Mauser and Walther.

THE Numismatica Ars Classica (15% buyer’s premium plus local sales tax) sale in Zurich on May 12 was no less wonderful than most of its predecessors. We have become used to prices which draw gasps from this house.

THE way Bonhams’ (17.5% buyer's premium) empire has adapted to the received wisdom that specialisation is a key to today’s macro auction environment is to have niche markets catered for at different outposts. Among the areas catered for at the Midlands branch at Knowle are such widely known ones as mechanical music and railwayana and, in ascending degree of arcane nature, wireless sets, optical instruments, firemarks, truncheons and tipstaffs.

SALES of Victoria Cross groups continue to set new auction records.

Despite the important nature of many items being sold to militaria and weapons specialists at the Marlow rooms of Bosleys (15% buyer's premium) on March 10, there were, as usual, a number of more domestic objects included.

Pictured right is a Fokker cylinder from a WWI German triplane that made £3600 at Bonhams Oxford (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale of arms and militaria on April 13.

MOVING just South of the Border to Jack Dudgeon (10% buyer's premium) in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, and echoes of one of the key incidents of the Second World War provided keen specialist interest at their April 19 sale.

NOT every auctioneer, and certainly not every dealer, is happy with the coverage given to the antiques trade on television, but Norfolk auctioneers Holts (15% buyer's premium), who hold their specialist sales of antique and sporting guns in the suitably militaristic Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea, have cause to be grateful for one TV series.