Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Example of the first book printed in Antarctica sells for £55,000
03 February 2017A rare copy of the first book printed in Antarctica has sold for £55,000 at Bonhams.
Checking out a chess trailblazer
28 January 2017Later 1473 version of the earliest recorded work on the game makes £50,000 at auction
Newton’s giant leap for mankind
21 January 2017Landmark scientific work produced thanks to astronomer Halley soars to double estimate
Sale testament to great collection
14 January 2017Nearly 60% of Ryrie bible lots go over estimate in New York and just 15 fail to find a new home
Scientific record-breakers
07 January 2017Second slice of extensive collections features top sums despite other sale casualties
Rich crop of end-of-year results
31 December 2016Final two months of 2016 were packed with good English, US and continental European sales
Keys to auction vast library from Morningthorpe Manor
26 August 2016A four-day sale of the contents of a Norfolk country house being conducted by Keys at their Aylsham rooms will include on September 8-9 the vast library formed by Ron Fiske at Morningthorpe Manor.
The Man of La Mancha in Norfolk – first English edition of Don Quixote makes £25,000
09 August 2016One of a great many books removed from a couple of terraced houses in Norwich for sale by Keys of Aylsham was an 1612 first English edition of the first part only of Don Quixote.
First edition recalled issue of Alice set to take top spot at Christie's
06 June 2016With an estimate of $2-3m, a first printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) being offered by Christie's New York on June 16 is eagerly anticipated.
That’s the ticket – fares rise to £3200
05 December 2011DOMINIC Winter, who included the Alfred A. Charleswoth collection of old railway tickets as part of their recent collectors' and transport sale, had only a limited track record on which to rely – they sold a rare ticket for around £2000 some seven years ago.
World’s first sports broadcast comes up for sale
21 November 2011IN a world where instant electronic communication and exchange of information is available to all, two lengths of original Morse code ticker-tape seem akin to tele-antiquities.
Decoding the oldest trick in the book
27 September 2011THE largest 'Conjuring' sale seen in London for some time, at Bloomsbury Auctions on September 8, had at its core the 460-lot collection of the late Bob Read, a 'Close-Up Entertainer' and lecturer in the UK and USA who was a tireless researcher into the history of magic and conjuring.
Rare photographic record of Great Exhibition makes £180,000 at auction
20 June 2011WHEN a grand, photographically illustrated record of the Great Exhibition of 1851 was planned by the Royal Commissioners and Executive Committee, they nonetheless kept a tight grip on the exhibition purse strings.
Metastasis – a winning hand transformed
12 October 2009METASTASIS, to most people, is a word with rather grim connotations – referring as it does to the spread of cancer. Applied to a set of playing cards, however, it has an altogether different and more attractive meaning.
On the origin of bidding...
08 May 2009A YEAR that marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species has already produced several television and radio programmes on Darwin, and it was always to be expected that his saleroom profile might be high in 2009.
All at sea for the first time and earning a £52,000
18 December 2007A copy of the earliest printed sea atlas sold for a record £52,000 to a Dutch dealer in an Anderson & Garland sale of November 28.
The tale of how a man was turned into a dormouse
18 December 2006JOHN Taylor was the Sawrey joiner and wheelwright, whose wife and stout, elderly daughter, Agnes Anne, kept the village shop immortalised by Beatrix Potter in Ginger and Pickles. But the first Taylor to appear in one of her books was his son, young John, who was the model for the terrier carpenter John Joiner in The Roly Poly Pudding.