Collectables

Featuring both real and mythical creatures, including a monstrous selection of denizens of the deep, this map of Iceland with its mountains, fjords, rivers, glaciers and a volcano is one of the more famous found in Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis terrarum.

It looks very tatty, but the dust jacket shown below is apparently a rare variant featuring a classic 1937 design by Alex Jardine for a 1927 first ‘Coronation’ edition of the Café Royal Cocktail Book.

Literary enthusiasts could get their fix at Shapero Modern’s exhibition 'Still Reading' (until December 4) this month, held in conjunction with Sladmore Contemporary. It includes a number of maquettes and bronzes by sculptor Martin Jennings.

Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925) was the first president and founder of the Republic of China, and his bust adorns the obverse of a coin which will highlight the next Coins and Currency Auction at Rago, New Jersey, on December 2.

A Beatles 'Love Me Do' signed single will be auctioned by RR Auction, Boston, in the online-only Marvels of Modern Music Sale running from December 7-14.

Performing arts dealer Sarah White is just one of many setting up at the event in London on Sunday, December 3, bringing with her some unusual panto playbills.

After a two-year wait, lots from the defunct manuscript investment scheme Aristophil will be resold at the Drouot in Paris next month.

Worlds End Bookshop, one of the dealers at the PBFA’s Christmas fair in Bloomsbury on Saturday, December 2, will be featuring a set of first editions by design icon David Hicks.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

A mid-19th century scrimshaw carved whalebone walking cane sold for a house record of £17,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at East Bristol Auctions on November 9.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

“I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele,” Siegfried Sassoon famously wrote of the First World War carnage which ended in November 1917.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.

A 700-lot sale devoted entirely to one single-owner collection of comic book character artefacts is to be offered on November 18 by Milestone Auctions of Willoughby, Ohio.

What expert James Opie described as “the most intriguing collection I have ever come across” provided Rochester auction house C&T (18% buyer’s premium) with its biggest statement yet in the toy soldiers market.