Auctions

The collecting market for dolls’ house furniture has been enjoying a boom period if recent prices have been anything to go by.

The British Toy Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) sale on January 8 in Runcorn included several Pelham Puppets rarities.

The final part of dealer Jack Webb's collection displayed his passion for military photographs, especially daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and cartes de visite.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

It was not uncommon in the 18th century for a doll to be presented within its own miniature doll-scaled world.

Auction house H&H Classics (15% buyer’s premium) is best known for selling full-sized vehicles but a smaller model impressed in a recent automobilia sale.

A Dinky Supertoys 935 Leyland Octopus flat truck with chains in its original box sold for £8200 at Kent saleroom C&T (22% buyer’s premium) on January 14.

ATG’s pick of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com, including both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

The strong level of prices being paid by collectors for dolls’ house furniture was underlined at a recent C&T sale.

How did toy manufacturers get boys in the rather less PC 1960s to play with dolls?

This Volvo PV 444 diecast toy is by the Swedish toy distributor Gösta Norén.

The cow catcher and bell on this Gauge 1 clockwork loco gives the game away: although made by German firm Märklin, the set was for the American market.

The Swiss maker Bovet Fleurier, chartered on May 1, 1822, in London as one of first watch companies to do business in China.

A collection of watercolours by Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969) given their own stand-alone catalogue set pulses racing at Lyon & Turnbull.

Just before the turn of the century, the Austrian artist Koloman Moser began working as a teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna. He was equally proficient in painting as he was in designing jewellery, silverware or ceramics.

This portrait of a young girl with a red headscarf caused the biggest surprise in the latest sale of Russian art at Dr Fischer (28% buyer’s premium) in Heilbronn, Germany.

Furnished dolls’ houses and accessories in general are proving the most dynamic area of the collecting market

Shown below is a page from another early railway-related work that did well at auction.

Dealership offers items from the excellent Sir William McAlpine collection at Forum Auctions

In a market challenged by a lack of fresh consignments, works new to the saleroom stand out