Medals

A temporary export block has been placed on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Polar Medal in the hope a buyer in the UK can pay £1.7m.

By all accounts, the Bulgarian prince and later Tsar Ferdinand I was a passionate railway enthusiast.

Among the highlights of The Premier Sale at St James’s Auctions on September 27 is this Battle of Culloden gold commemorative medal.

A Queen’s Gallantry Medal in its case of issue awarded to a police constable who helped to catch two violent escaped prisoners sold for £2400 at auction.

The esteem in which British botanist William Lawrence Balls (1882-1960) was held is obvious from lots offered at Norfolk auction house Keys (25% buyer’s premium) on July 26-28.

The SS Normandie was both the apogee and the nadir of the Art Deco movement.

A medal awarded to Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood artist William Holman-Hunt (1827- 1910) has been purchased by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from dealer Tregeagle Fine Art.

Numismatic dealer Daniel Fearon has sold a group of bronzed galvano medals depicting Charles (then nearly five years old), The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Margaret to the British Museum’s department of coins and medals just ahead of this year’s coronation.

The unexpected but very welcome increase in demand that the market experienced amid Covid lockdowns continued in 2022 as restrictions eased – and auction houses are optimistic about another strong performance this year

The Shanghai Jubilee Medal was instituted in 1893 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first British consul created after the Treaty of Nanking in 1843.

Two Herschel family-related historic items – a Royal Society King’s medal and a manuscript memoir – have changed hands at auction and in a private sale.

Although the box to this bronze medal is dated 1873 (leading the auction house to conclude it was Victorian), the piece itself was struck in 1760.

The Royal Medal for Astronomy is presented each year by the Royal Society for distinguished contributions to the applied sciences.

Although an auction house since 1918, stamps specialist Harmers is a relative newcomer to the London numismatic sales.

A group of medals awarded to the great scientist, explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was fiercely contested at auction last week, hammered down for a £273,000 (or £327,600 with buyer’s premium) total against a high estimate of £80,900.

Spotlight on honours sold recently includes courageous lifesavers from civilian backgrounds.