Collectables

In its catalogue notes for the July 22 Scottish Greats: Football, Golf, Fishing and more sale, McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) was careful to say regarding a football shirt on offer that it could give no guarantee it was exactly as billed.

In the years 1881-82, the Rev William Essery was for many months a passenger on the SS Ceylon.

Percy Thomas Tibbles, born in Hampstead, London, in 1881, was destined to become famous for cutting women in half.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s poems to be published in her lifetime, 'The Colossus and other Poems', sold for a record £75,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

Special Auctions Services (25% buyer’s premium) in Newbury sold the collection of John Garside last month.

Priced on the cover at nine pence, it was a British copy of a Marvel comic of 1983, one that saw the first appearance of the mighty Thor, that led the bidding at £6300 in the comics section of a July 21-22 sale held by Fieldings (24% buyer’s premium).

Sasha dolls were popular presents in the sixties and seventies and still in demand enough at auction today to hit four figures.

The headline borrows the title given to an online Christie’s (26/20% buyer’s premium) sale – one that presented more than 80 modern first editions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

The appetite for early Manchester United memorabilia is strong – even for a player who started out at their arch-rivals

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Firsts: London’s Rare Books Fair has added an impressive 49 dealers to the roster for its 65th edition thanks to an influx of international traders.

Bonhams is to offer what it calls ‘the finest collection of Welsh treen ever presented’ for auction next month.

Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Kelly (1871-1936) had a decent wartime career in the Royal Navy but it was a peacetime crisis that also showed his skills: the Invergordon Mutiny.

“Dear Tom, I should like to write a story called ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ (the title, I suppose, could be changed if necessary). I should certainly expect to let you have it by Oct. 1st.”

The two cut-out and trimmed coloured initials illustrated here are part of a group of six, taken from two manuscripts of 12th century French origin, that made up a lot sold for £10,000 in a July 6 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

To get an idea of the healthy nature of the medals market at the moment, consider the Victoria Cross sold at Spink (20% buyer’s premium) this summer.

Bearing as its title ‘Certain Directions for the Sending of Men and Comodities, & Cattle to Virginia’, a 10pp secretarial manuscript thought to date from c.1609 proved a major attraction in a July 14 sale held by Forum (15/20/12.5% buyer’s premium).

The sales at Poster Auctions International (20% buyer’s premium) in New York regularly include a selection of examples by Alphonse Mucha and its most recent auction was no exception.

Sabena was mainland Europe’s first airline to offer a transatlantic jet service via Boeing 707 and this design by Gaston Van den Eynde is one of a series that he designed to herald the Belgian airline’s jet age.