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Green shoots in the market for the most iconic of all English furniture was among the more encouraging findings of the Antique Furniture Price Index in 2012.

In 1881, at around the time of his 18th birthday, the orphan and Eton College schoolboy John Edmund Hugh Balfour went on a major spending spree.

Christie’s have released global sales figures of £3.92bn, a 10% annual rise. The figure, which includes buyer’s premium, represents the highest sales total in the company’s history.

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

The handwritten draft of one of John Betjeman’s best-known poems, ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’, is just one of the gems in the next tranche of the Roy Davids Collection to appear at Bonhams Bond Street.

A group of hitherto unknown 19th century documents has come to light revealing illegal trafficking of Chinese people to Latin America where they were forced into slavery.

Medals and other material relating to George William Hutson, a British athlete who served in the First World War, will be offered for sale at Peacocks on February 1 in Bedford.

Frank Marshall’s two-day sale on January 29-30 in Knutsford, Cheshire, will include this painting by Laslett John Pott (1837-1898).

Andrew Smith & Son’s January 29 sale in Winchester includes this winter landscape by Frederick Marinus Kruseman (1816-82).

The name of the late London dealer Ernest Ohly, who enjoyed international renown during his lifetime, was on everyone’s mind at one of 2013’s first major provincial sales.

A rare American coin from a schoolboy’s coin collection was knocked down at auction for £185,000 at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis this week.

The Association of Accredited Auctioneers (Triple-A), founded in 2012 by 19 UK auctioneers to attract Chinese buyers, are to hold an auction of Western fine art and antiques in China.

‘Masterpiece London’ has appointed Nazy Vassegh as chief executive with immediate effect. This is a newly created position at the fair and, according to a statement released last week, Nazy’s role will be to build and develop the fair’s brand both nationally and internationally.

For the first time this year, ‘Master Paintings Week’ and ‘Master Drawings London’ will combine together under the new umbrella title of ‘London Art Week’ from June 28 to July 5.

Nestled among a 173-lot ‘time capsule’ collection from a Staffordshire estate offered at Hanson’s on January 12, the Old Master picture shown here proved to be the star performer of the sale by some considerable margin.

After a tough economic year, several French auction firms have now released their sales figures for 2012.

Police are appealing to antique collectors and dealers to contact them if they have come into contact with some valuable pieces which were stolen during a burglary in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.

Antiques traders in the Oxfordshire area are being urged to be on their guard after a theft at Burford Antiques Centre.

This 19th century ceramic plaque painted with two duellists in sepia forms part of the collection of the late Bernard Popland, a former championship fencer.

Consigned to Special Auction Services on the back of the £76,000 Märklin ‘first series’ tinplate toy HMS Terrible they sold from the Ron McCrindell collection in April 2012, this Märklin tinplate battleship Sachsen will be offered in Greenham, near Newbury, on January 31.