Collectables

It is a year now since Jim Spencer joined Derbyshire saleroom Hansons (20% buyer’s premium), tasked with building up the book sections of their sales.

Heritage Auctions says more than half of its sales are now made through the internet.

Texas-based fine art and collectables specialist Heritage Auctions announced a number of new developments to its mobile app last month. Advances included one-touch mobile bidding and an extension to the barcode scanning facility for coins.

Roman and 20th century poetry, science and sarcasm, Arctic printing, Mayan discoveries, cranes and a porcupine, as well as a miniature master of calligraphy all featured in one of the first large London book sales of the year.

If you want to find something unusual in the book and ephemera line, then head to one of the fairs held by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).

Extending from the tip of Manhattan as far north as 42nd Street, this large-scale Map of the City of New York of 1850 identifies by means of symbols and a key the city’s churches, schools, hotels, public buildings, parks, cemeteries and other places of interest.

The Japanese Legacy Symposium’s Samurai Armor Fair debuts this month.

Launched in 1965, TV Century 21 featured the work of some of the best comic artists of the day – among them Ron Turner, whose contributions included strips featuring The Daleks, Stingray and Captain Scarlet.

Two exceptionally rare celestial globes or spheres have made their mark in Geneva and London salerooms in recent times – and on the same day.

Henry Shaw (1812-87) is a well-known name in the world of antique taxidermy.

Evidence of the shrewd taste of student entertainments officers at Warwick University back in the Sixties came at Batemans’ (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Stamford in the form of two concert posters.

An 800-year-old hurdy-gurdy, thought to be the oldest in Europe, features in a collection of 450 musical instruments from a German private museum coming up at auction.