Heritage Auctions

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).

The quirky characterful and very British art pottery created by the late 19th/early 20th century artist potters Wallace, Robert and Edwin Martin is as popular in the US as in its country of origin.

It is not always the most obviously valuable coins that make the most at auction. Or even the ones with the highest original value. A humble Irish 20p dating from the relatively recent year of 1985 is a good case in point.

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.

A collection of Muhammad Ali memorabilia is being sold in a Dallas saleroom following an outpouring of related consignments from the public in light of the boxer’s death.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions set a new record for any copper or bronze coin when a 1933 penny took $165,000 (£127,000). The buyer was a private collector.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas and New York have reported their best year ever in 2014, with sales topping $969m.

“It is a somewhat incoherent narrative, which, however, gives Lon Chaney an opportunity to turn up in an uncanny disguise and also to manifest his powers as Scotland Yard’s expert hypnotist. You are therefore treated to close-ups of Mr Chaney’s rolling orbs, which, fortunately, do not exert their influence on the audience.”

A remarkable archive of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s personal property makes its second visit to the auction room in less than a decade this month when it is offered by Heritage Auctions in New York.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas, are claiming a new auction record for an insert movie poster.

For the second time in a decade, on August 10, Heritage in Dallas will offer for sale the prototype of the original GI Joe figure.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions say 2012 was their best year to date, with total sales of more than $860m.

A 1928 movie poster of Mickey Mouse, thought to be the earliest surviving poster of the Walt Disney character, has fetched $85,000 (£56,000) at auction in Dallas, Texas.