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Many objects can go on show for the first time now that the William Morris Gallery has reopened after a £5m revamp.

A pair of running spikes that belonged to double Olympic 100m and 200m gold medallist Usain Bolt sped to a £25,000 price at a Birmingham charity auction.

Tributes have been paid to antiques expert and TV presenter David Barby, who has died following a short illness.

Coins, medals and watches worth over £50,000 have been stolen as a series of museum break-ins continues.

There were several highlights at Bonhams’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) latest portrait miniatures sale in Knightsbridge on June 28.

An Olympic blazer and a painted diploma belonging to Ada Smith, a bronze medal-winning gymnast from Leigh near Wigan, will be up for auction on August 16-17 at Adam Partridge auctioneers of Macclesfield, Cheshire.

A market-fresh private Scottish collection of works by John Maclauchlan Milne (1886-1957) has been consigned to Lindsay Burns & Company’s antiques and fine art sale on August 14.

This 19th century metamorphic mahogany estates writing desk will appear at Diamond Mills & Co’s sale in Felixstowe on August 8.

A group of items belonging to Inspector Black, the arresting officer in the 1950s murder trial of Timothy Evans, is to be offered for sale on August 4 at Ryedale Auctioneers in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire.

This is the season of agricultural shows and so Duke’s of Dorchester’s June 20 sale of British agricultural medals was well timed.

Of all the statistics – and there are many – to emerge from the British Antique Dealers’ Association 2011 Survey, it is the £855m ($1.4bn) estimated turnover among members that stands out.

This intricate ivory okimono group from c.1880 took £25,000 at the most recent sale held by Nicholson’s of Fernhurst.

Parisian auctioneer Claude Aguttes has been banned from holding sales for two months following an investigation into the sale of a Russian painting at the Hôtel Drouot in October 2007.

Lyon & Turnbull are to sell the contents of the New York home of Donald and Eleanor Taffner, important collectors of works by the Glasgow School.

Beijing-based auction house China Guardian is reported to be launching a sales programme in Hong Kong this autumn.

Two men have been charged with theft after Henry Moore’s ‘Working Model for Sundial 1965’ sculpture and a bronze plinth were stolen from his former home.

A rare blue and white version of William De Morgan’s design of a kingfisher catching a fish while perched on a branch appeared at the latest Arts & Crafts sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

Dealer, collector, author, military historian – Shamus Wade amassed the remarkable collection of toy soldiers and figures which was recently sold at Special Auction Services of Greenham, near Newbury.

Documented in the book ‘The Allure of Toy Ships: American & European Nautical Toys from the 19th and 20th Centuries’, the Richard T. Claus collection is widely acknowledged as the best toy boat collection in America and, some say, rivals the very best in Europe.

Among the clocks sold in London this summer, there were some of the glitziest and most expensive timekeepers to go under the hammer in recent times, many of them made for the Chinese market.