Collectables

Fancy owning a piece of the Eiffel Tower, the ceiling from a Parisian boulangerie or butcher’s shop or an old seat from the Metro?

Estimated at £1200-1800, a rare Tunbridge ware spice box sold for £10,600 at Bleasdales in Warwick.

Information has come to light proving that a newly-discovered flag due to sell at auction in March was not that flown from HMS Leviathan at the Battle of Trafalgar. It has since been withdrawn from sale.

Dreweatts are to offer 14 boxes from an important American collection of 18th and 19th century European gold boxes as part of a December 3 sale titled Iconic Jewels & Treasures.

An Apple-1, the technology that heralded a revolution in home computing when it was launched as Apple’s first product in 1976, is for sale via Christie’s online.

“Button who?” When Shropshire documents consultant Ben Jones was told that an American client was considering selling the clipped signature of Button Gwinnett he reached for the search engine.

A Grand Tour cork model of the Temple of Zeus at Paestum has sold for £44,000 at Hampstead Auctions in north London.

Fans of Lord Snooty and his Pals, Big Eggo, Morgyn the Mighty and dear Contrary Mary were drawn to the Comic Book Auctions sale of September 13 by the appearance of a good copy of the very first issue of the Beano.

Estimated at £2000-3000 in the printed catalogue, this Italian casket drew such pre-sale interest that it was quickly upgraded in the online catalogue to £5000-7000.

Paperweights from makers such as Caithness, Mdina, Selkirk, Wedgwood and Whitefriars go under the hammer at auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent in Cirencester on August 7.

Personal effects of Sir Winston Churchill, including the morocco dispatch box pictured here, were among the highlights of Sotheby’s highly publicised estate sale of his youngest child, the late Mary Soames.

The £40,000 corkscrew with an old London Bridge connection sold by auctioneers Reeman Dansie on November 26 is an extremely rare Victorian patent.

The big comic story of the year – and one unlikely to be bettered – when two New York specialist dealers, Stephen Fisher and Vincent Zurzolo, paid $3.2m (£1.93m) for a copy of Action Comics No.1. When launched in June, 1938 it had originally cost just 10 cents.

Pick up your stick and head out for ‘Canemania 2014’, the ninth international cane conference, to be held from September 10-13 in London.

The first instalment of a single-owner collection of early leather vessels was dispersed in Christie’s South Kensington’s vernacular and country-style furnishing ‘Masters and Makers’ sale.

Designed and manufactured by the Siemens factory in Woolwich from 1929, the 200 Series dial telephone (aka the Neophone) is today considered an Art Deco design classic and the first truly modern telephone.

South London auctioneers Rosebery’s sold the Masonic collection of Albert Edward Collins Nice (1898-1969) as the first tranche of their quarterly fine art sale that covered three days and three catalogues.

This copy of The Beano No 1 from 1938 will be offered in Comic Book Auctions’ latest sale closing on March 4.

This rust-tinged enamelled sheet iron sign was sold for £31,500 at Summers Place Auctions’ latest sale in Billingshurst, West Sussex.

It is not often that auctioneer Graham Budd finds his name splashed over the front pages of Estonian newspapers but when a particular group of cycling memorabilia came up at his November 4-5 sale it is exactly what happened.