Auctions

Medals for service in the Falklands, Northern Ireland and long service/good conduct denote a busy 1980s career. In value terms, for a non-special forces unit, it means a price probably within £1000 at auction. But it is a single action lasting about 17 minutes from start to finish which explains why such a group on offer at Woolley & Wallis on November 22 is estimated at £20,000-30,000.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Scottish Silver & Applied Arts on August 16 was a Jacobite drinking glass with a difference.

A 19th century painting depicting the death of Horatio Nelson soared to £21,500 at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on July 14.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period August 10-17, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Chiswick Auctions is to open its South Kensington showroom manned by a group of former Christie’s staff early next month.

A unique Victoria Cross and other awards won by one of the greatest heroes in Canadian history is to be auctioned by Dix Noonan Webb on September 27.

Medals and orders can be heavy things. So what better way to carry around your various hard-earned gongs than a one-size-fits-all miniature version of them all?

The British Museum’s big summer exhibition on Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai is over, but more art from the Land of the Rising Sun is in the offing (also see International Events, ATG No 2305).

Considering there were only 150 men defending Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus, an impressive number of medals awarded after that epic 1879 encounter have come to auction recently.

Personal and unique insights into warfare score highly at auction. So it proved at Cambridge firm Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) in The Connoisseurs Sale on July 6, when a journal revealing the private thoughts of a Second World War fighter ace credited with more enemy ‘kills’ than any other British pilot doubled the top estimate to sell for £16,000.

London dealership Marchant is to sell Chinese artworks at a dedicated auction in New York.

In the days when loved ones in the armed forces would head abroad on service for up to several years, not knowing when or if they would return, ‘sweetheart’ brooches were a way of remembering them.

Over the years, any number of rare and very early manuscript fragments have been recovered from disintegrating old bindings in which they had been used as packing.