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Included among the fountains, wellheads and lead figures at Sotheby’s Sussex on 20-21 May were 18 watering cans from the collection built up over 15 years by John Massey, a senior director of the famous Haws Watering Can Company for over 25 years.

Sotheby’s wait for a change of climate to see prices grow after statuary sale falters: Sotheby's specialist-in-charge of the Sussex garden statuary sales, Rupert van der Werff, believes the most reliable barometer for this area is the housing market. Certainly the well-publicised recession in that overheated area has had a hugely detrimental effect on statuary.

AT OVER 1000 lots, the May 22 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt of Taunton was certainly one of the bigger sales of that week, but only a single lot topped the £1000 mark – a disbound, incomplete and defective English Bible. Apparently a 1540 reissue in smaller format of the Great Bible that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be placed in the country’s churches so that “parishioners may moste commodiously resorte to the same”, it was bid up to £1250.

Greg Martin is a name synonymous with the finest and the most spectacularly expensive of American firearms. In this respect the June 16 Greg Martin Auctions sale will live up to expectations with a rare 1849 Colt revolver, but most British attention will be focused on a group of Nelson memorabilia which includes Vice Admiral Collingwood’s copy of Nelson’s standing orders for battle, drawn up on the Victory on October 9-10, 1805 and signed Nelson & Brontë.

Among the highlights of the collection of the late John Stewart Parry sold by Bruton Knowles at the Tithe Barn, Southam from May 19-23 was this carved and painted wood armorial figure of a greyhound. Standing 211/2in (55cm) high and retaining its original paintwork, the 19th century piece received plenty of interest from the trade before it was knocked down to a London dealer for £3600 (plus 15% buyer’s premium).

Canadian-based eBay seller gstark didn’t need to include the words “extremely rare” in his auction listing for a jade green Sony TR-55 transistor radio. Fifteen ardent bidders already knew that.

Christie’s have helped negotiate the sale to the Victoria and Albert Museum of the Castlereagh gold inkstand created by Paul Storr and Philip Rundell for the British diplomat Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822) in 1818.