Auctions

Mark Law has left Dreweatts in Donnington Priory, with the future of the firm now unclear.

The button from the Lancaster bomber of 617 Squadron that released the ‘bouncing bomb’ which destroyed the Möhne Dam has sold after being offered at auction for the first time.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

It may be pretty quiet on the auction front in Europe but Down Under the saleroom and fairs scene is in full swing.

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.

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.

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.

An RAF logbook added value to a Second World War casualty group sold at Ipswich saleroom Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) on July 15-16.

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.

Sold for £400 on July 5 by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), as part of an online sale of cricket books, was one of just 50 specially bound copies of The Catch: A Correspondence by Harold Pinter and Alan Wilkinson.

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.