Collectables

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.

London is thick with antiques events this weekend and here we pick two specialist fairs in Kensington.

The name on the frame was the name of the game at Charles Miller’s November 7 auction in west London where a “rather tired and dirty” sextant sold for £28,000.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.

Details of the annual National Vintage Tackle Fair have been announced by vintage tackle dealer John Andrews, who is also the organiser.

Gilleasbuig Ferguson Rare Books trades from the Isle of Skye and is a member of the ABA, PBFA and ILAB.

Dated by the Edinburgh auctioneers to c.1815-17, a group of watercolours made on a voyage to the Middle and Far East was bid to a far higher than expected £13,000 in a 650-lot Lyon & Turnbull (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 11.