Collectables

A 1765 first of John L Cowley’s The theory of perspective demonstrated… sold for £17,000 by Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 12 appears to be the only first edition recorded at auction.

The button from the Lancaster bomber of 617 Squadron that released the ‘bouncing bomb’ which destroyed the Möhne Dam has sold after being offered at auction for the first time.

Sold for £400 on July 5 by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), as part of an online sale of cricket books, was one of just 50 specially bound copies of The Catch: A Correspondence by Harold Pinter and Alan Wilkinson.

Thomaston Place Auction Galleries of Maine is holding its annual summer sale, a three-day offering of more than 1500 lots covering a huge variety of different categories.

An RAF logbook added value to a Second World War casualty group sold at Ipswich saleroom Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) on July 15-16.

Operations behind enemy lines was the theme linking two special forces medals groups sold by London auction house Spink (20% buyer’s premium) on July 26.

Medals for service in the Falklands, Northern Ireland and long service/good conduct denote a busy 1980s career. In value terms, for a non-special forces unit, it means a price probably within £1000 at auction. But it is a single action lasting about 17 minutes from start to finish which explains why such a group on offer at Woolley & Wallis on November 22 is estimated at £20,000-30,000.

Thomas Del Mar, former Sotheby’s specialist and founder of the 25 Blythe Road group of auctioneers, turns fair organiser next month. The first Olympia Arms Fair takes place on September 30.

The London Antique Arms Fair is usually a biannual event, but this year the organiser is rather busy – in November they are putting together the Passchendaele Salute 2017 at Fort Seclin near Lille, France.

A unique Victoria Cross and other awards won by one of the greatest heroes in Canadian history is to be auctioned by Dix Noonan Webb on September 27.

Warwick arms and armour dealer Runjeet Singh will have a representative at the new Olympia fair (see separate story) but he has a ‘fixture clash’ to cope with. The west London show coincides with his first exhibition in Asia.

Medals and orders can be heavy things. So what better way to carry around your various hard-earned gongs than a one-size-fits-all miniature version of them all?

Back in December 1962, a Yorkshire show promoter booked a new Liverpool band to play at Harrogate’s Royal Hall on the strength of their first record which had charted at No 17 a couple of months earlier.

Considering there were only 150 men defending Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus, an impressive number of medals awarded after that epic 1879 encounter have come to auction recently.

Personal and unique insights into warfare score highly at auction. So it proved at Cambridge firm Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) in The Connoisseurs Sale on July 6, when a journal revealing the private thoughts of a Second World War fighter ace credited with more enemy ‘kills’ than any other British pilot doubled the top estimate to sell for £16,000.

A 19th century oak snuff box offered at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on July 11 was inset with copper and inscribed Made from the wreck of the Betsy Cains which brought King William to England 1688 and A.Reed Esq. Mayor 1827.

In the days when loved ones in the armed forces would head abroad on service for up to several years, not knowing when or if they would return, ‘sweetheart’ brooches were a way of remembering them.