Heritage Auctions

'No, you can't chop your Poppa up in Massachusetts', the refrain from a once hugely popular song, and the verse from a skipping-rope rhyme with which this article ends, both derive from the controversy that continues to this day regarding one of America's most famous murder trials – and to a legal document sold on October 19 by Heritage Auctions of Dallas.

An oil study once believed to be a cheap print set a record for the American artist Norman Rockwell last week.

A record for a Casablanca movie poster was made last week when an Italian example sold for a premium-inclusive $478,000 (£361,800).

You may have, possibly, maybe, perhaps, gleaned by now that 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest albums of all time.

‘In God we trust’ goes the phrase. It had a double meaning when an American church sold a rare 19th century coin with a result no doubt causing more than a few hallelujahs.

“Remember the Alamo!” It was the battle cry that spurred the Texans on to victory during their 1836 revolution, recalling the sacrificial last stand of a few heroic men during a brutal siege by the Mexican Army.

A poster for the classic film The Invisible Man soared to four times its low estimate at a recent Heritage Auctions sale in Dallas.

This sturdy-looking ‘stagecoach trunk’ accompanied the great American writer Mark Twain on a great many of his travels. It will be offered for sale at Heritage Auctions in New York on March 8 where the starting bid is $25,000.

The plastic fiver has become a familiar sight in the UK since it was issued last September and this summer the tenner version will follow. It seems unlikely that glass coins will also appear – but that was not the case in the US in 1942.

A button reading ‘Equality’ and commemorating Booker T Washington’s dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House is included in Heritage Auction’s upcoming Americana sale.

A stone tablet, inscribed with the Ten Commandments and thought to be the earliest-known complete example, has been sold at auction in Beverly Hills for $850,000 (£683,000).