Auctions

A camera belonging to ill-fated US aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart is among the lots going under the hammer at McTear’s in Glasgow this month.

There was some good old fashioned saleroom drama at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions in Newbury yesterday when a moai kavakava style figure, estimated to bring just £400-600, sold at £95,000. The buyer in Berkshire was from Australia.

A rotund Boris Johnson in a polka-dot clown outfit; Barack Obama in a Superman costume getting clobbered by a giant fist; the naked figure of George Bush crouched in the grass like an ape – these are among the illustrations to come under the hammer at Sotheby’s upcoming sale of works by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.

As the market changes, salerooms come and go. Few have come and are soon to go like Christie’s South Kensington. But the forces behind the impending demise of the once-trailblazing auction house have been in the works for some time.

Christie’s is proposing to close its auctions in South Kensington.

The two Boer Wars were real eye-openers to the Brits in many ways. It was a period when colonial campaigns collided with the reality of modern warfare, and supplying a mass army was a big part of this.

An oil study by the Danish artist Peder Severin Kroyer for one of his best known and final masterworks has sold for €580,000 (£495,725) at Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen.

It will come as no surprise that signed Beatles albums are some of the top sellers in the entertainment memorabilia collecting field. But have you heard of the Courtyard Music Group?

A comic picture book issued by Fores in 1842 and titled ‘The Brother to the Moon’s Visit to the Court of Queen Vic’ would appear to be a great rarity, and a copy offered by Cheffins of Cambridge on February 22 made a much higher than predicted £1900.

Lord Ashcroft has added another Victoria Cross to his mightily impressive and ever-growing collection. He bought the VC awarded to Yorkshire hero George Sanders for bravery at the first day of the Somme in 1916 and other honours Sanders had earned, including a Military Cross.

Dealer Wartski has bought a boxed set of Fabergé cutlery at auction for the Royal Pump Room Museum in Harrogate.

A shimmering floral landscape by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was knocked down at £42.5m at Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist & Modern art in London on March 1.

Online auction house Auctionata is closing down after an attempt to find new investment failed to materialise.

The worldwide reach of UK regional auctions is summed up beautifully by a militaria lot sold in the Cotswolds: a kora fighting sword given by a Nepalese ruler to a British field marshal who commanded in India and was revered by the Australians and Gurkhas.

Christie’s is looking to repeat its success by making a bumper price for a piece of medieval tomb sculpture in London this summer.

Sotheby’s returned to profit in the fourth quarter of 2016, attributing this to improved commissions and growing market confidence, though sales for 2016 overall were down.

A Chinese porcelain wucai fish vase sold for £810,000 at Fellows on Monday – 450 times its estimate. Such large wucai or 'five colours' fish jars tend to date from the reign of Jiajing (1522-1566) but Fellows believed it to be 20th century.

It ain’t rocket science: rarity adds value. While various other factors come into play, the number of a particular item in existence is a clear driver of auction prices, and in militaria the defence of Rorke’s Drift is a classic example.

Auction Technology Group, parent company of Antiques Trade Gazette, has issued guidance to auctioneers on how to display fees and charges alongside estimates.