Collectables

Sold for a record $2750 (£2220) at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) in California on October 10 was an inscribed copy of The World Set Free, a prophetic novel by HG Wells.

Rare medals stolen from a car and found discarded in a park 10 months later have been reunited with their owner thanks to an ATG news story.

Code locked in a briefcase for two decades, a finely preserved, 1997 first issue of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was finally released this summer after being delivered by its Lancashire owners into the hands of a Derbyshire saleroom.

Two books from Herman Melville’s library, both volumes of classical poetry that were annotated throughout and in one instance signed, topped a recent New York sale.

Focusing on south-east Asia, a 90-lot map section in an Essex sale comprised the extraordinarily successful first portion of a collection of maps and charts assembled by Christopher Beresford-Jones.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

A 1547 translation into Arabic of Euclid’s Elementa Geometrica sold for £17,000 as part of an October 23 sale of Islamic and Near Eastern works on paper at Bloomsbury Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) on October 22,

Golf books do not bring as many really high prices as was once the case, but the most recent of the regular sales in this category held by a Californian saleroom did contain a couple of surprises.

This distinctive poster with its saw-edged image was created by the Polish designer Mieczyslaw Wasilewski for Brian De Palma’s classic 1987 crime thriller 'The Untouchables'.

More refined items are available in Chorley’s Cotswolds Country House sale in Prinknash Abbey on November 19-20 but few will attract more attention than this rare survivor from the early 1940s: a roll of loo paper featuring satirical cartoons of characters from Nazi Germany.

First work in photographer’s classic coverage of China and its people makes £48,000.

An RAF Second World War brown leather Type C flying helmet with goggles estimated at £400-500 in the Halls (23% buyer’s premium) Books, Medals & Militaria Auction on August 21 soared to £3400.

The sale at Knights Sporting Auctions in Leicester on November 2-3 includes a number of items previously sold by Christie’s as duplicates from the library of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 2010.