US

A single-page letter sent on the day before Steve Jobs’ 19th birthday to a close school friend, Tim Brown, sold for $400,000 (£292,825) in New York.

A rare work by Sarah Biffin (1784-1850), the early 19th century artist born without limbs, sold for £9000 at Sworders on December 15.

Catalogued as ‘fine and exceptionally rare’, a north German parade cuirass is on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago after being sold at auction.

A select 13-lot auction of works from the collection of Amalia de Schulthess at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) in New York on December 7 was led at $8.4m (£6.36m) by a classic René Magritte (1896-1967) Surrealist painting.

Modestly estimated at $3000-5000, a richly illustrated manuscript that presents in two finely bound folio volumes a pictorial record of the ‘Costumes et Plantes de L’Hindoustan’ made $80,000 (£58,395) in a New York auction.

A Christie’s New York (25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) online timed sale achieved six-figure bids for no fewer than eight lots and very high prices for a great many others while running up an impressive and premium-inclusive total of close on $4.75m (£3.45m).

When Phillips held an auction in London on November 10 in association with Maak Contemporary Ceramics of selections from the collection of Dr John P Driscoll, it produced a number of record-breaking prices for Hans Coper (1920-81) and ended with a new auction high for the studio potter of £520,000 (ATG No 2518).

Ancient Egyptian works in stone and metal were the three best-sellers in the latest auction of antiquities and ethnographic artefacts at Hindman (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

New faces at Hindman, Sotheby's, Bonhams and Phillips.

Comet depiction is one of the highlights as UK dealers target US sales opportunity

This classic example of the archaeological revivalist techniques that were so fashionable in jewellery making in the second half of the 19th century was one of the top-selling lots at Skinner (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

More than 700 lots of jewellery, silver, fine art, rugs, furnishings, and decorative and ethnographic art are to be offered by Nadeau’s on New Year’s Day.

A remarkable garniture of weapons including the sword Napoleon is believed to have carried when he seized power in 1799 sold at an Illinois auction house.

One of New York’s most prolific antiquities collectors has surrendered 180 ‘looted’ items from his collection and been barred for life from acquiring antiquities again.

This oil on canvas of a white-robed young couple by the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was sold for $800,000 (£601,505) in Chicago on December 2.

New York’s Winter Show tempts exhibitors back across the Pond in January.

A single-lot sale on October 19 offered an illuminated Ashkenazic prayer book that realised a premium-inclusive $8,307,000 (£6,019,565).