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UK: TWO days of selling in the niche sporting memorabilia market resulted in something of a score draw for specialists Mullock Madeley.

Irish bid beats London trade to £11,500 bureau plat UK: PHILLIPS’ Northern torch carrier nets consignments from an extensive area – everywhere east of the Pennines from the Scottish Border to South Lincolnshire – but, even so, the fine furniture sales that used to be held six times a year are now quarterly events with fairly slim 200-250-lot catalogues.

UK: FURNITURE and clocks made the running at the South Coast auctioneers’ final sale before Christmas, where local dealers were doing some last-minute shopping.

EBay are to provide the technology for customers to bid live online at sales held by hundreds of auction houses whose catalogues can be scanned on ICollector’s Website.

UK: “THAT is a heck of a lot of beverage, even for me,” said one dealer looking over the 64 lots of tea and coffee pots, some shown here, at Phillips (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale in Bury St. Edmunds on December 6-7.

FINE wine is one of those areas of the auction market which is bound to catch a cold if the world economy sneezes into recession or slowdown over the coming months. Higher than usual unsold rates at recent auctions in London and New York would suggest that buyers are already taking a more selective view of the wine market.

Sotheby’s Holdings have confirmed that eight per cent of their staff worldwide – around 165 employees – are to lose their jobs as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring programme.

HOPES of clarifying ownership rights over items sold at auction on the Internet have suffered a setback with the settling out of court of a potentially precedent-setting case.

YAHOO have decided to ban sales of Nazi memorabilia and other items promoting racism from their Website from January 10.

UK: THE Export Review Committee, which assesses whether outstanding works of art should be allowed to leave the country, has helped six such pieces stay in Britain in the past year.

UK: IF you stood fuming on the cocktail party sidelines over the festive season as your wife/husband got on famously with a lecherous member of the opposite sex, then something like this oversized (18in) metal syringe and vial which appeared at Christie's South Kensington on December 12, would have come in rather useful.

USA: A 137-lot collection of marine archaeological artefacts salvaged by the company Arqueonautas from seven wrecks on the reefs of the Cape Verde Islands rounded off Sotheby’s horological and scientific auction on December 19.

UK: Major new initiatives, including the introduction of a new criminal offence, are expected to come into force in the next few years to tackle illicit trade in cultural property.

UK: IN THE days when thousands of game birds would be shot in a morning on the moors by the likes of Walsingham and Ripon, it might have come as a shock to learn that no records of this gun ever making a successful kill existed, even more so when the target was many thousand times the size of your average pheasant.

THE flooded Welsh Marches in November didn’t augur well for sales but the Herefordshire auctioneers even managed to find a buyer for a highly unseasonal garden seat.

FRANCE: THREE French museums have become embroiled in legal controversy after harbouring works of art looted from their original owners during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II.

FRANCE: Following a two-year investigation, French police have rounded up a gypsy gang responsible for hundreds of thefts from châteaux and private homes, many in Normandy and the Paris area.

UK: THE market in Guinness collectables continues to be as thirsty as that for the black stuff itself, to the point where buyers have to be on guard against forgeries of better known pieces.

NEW YORK: PIRACY on the High Seas may be among the most dastardly of criminal activities, but when you look back at the Spanish Main with all its swashbuckling and early Hollywood Fairbanks and Flynn connotations, it remains among the most stirring and romantic.

The British Hallmarking Council has ruled that the old Dealer’s Notice for those selling gold, silver or platinum, will cease to be valid from March 31 next year.