Autograph

One of the largest collections of original John F. Kennedy documents remaining in private hands is being offered for sale by a London book dealer.

A hand-written and autographed speech by President John F Kennedy is among the lots from Malcolm S Forbes’ estate to be sold at auction next week.

“Button who?” When Shropshire documents consultant Ben Jones was told that an American client was considering selling the clipped signature of Button Gwinnett he reached for the search engine.

The strong historical appeal and the internet are two reasons for the growing interest in postcards, says David Smith, who runs IPM Promotions’ monthly postcard and collectors’ fair in Central London.

THE Ephemera Society holds its Summer Special Fair at Le Meridien Russell Hotel, Russell Square in London’s Bloomsbury on Sunday June 13. Expect more than 100 tables covered with greetings cards, newspapers, magazines, autographs, playbills, menus and all manner of paper collectables.

UK: LOCKED bill to bill on the five vellum rolls or membranes shown above, the longest of them stretching to 34in (86cm), are no fewer than 99 swan heads showing the different mandible marks used by ‘gamesters’ on the East Anglian Broadlands.

- Raymond Chandler on the English US: IN MY LAST American round-up, I reported on the sale at Swanns of an early printing of the Treaty of Paris that had been owned by the Reverend Samuel Cooper of Boston, a now largely forgotten but once key political and spiritual figure in the War of Independence.