North America

Relics from the dawn of the electro-magnetic telephone created a sensation when they appeared for sale in Massachusetts.

Bob Aibel is founder of Moderne, one of the exhibitors at the Philadelphia Show

'Moulin Rouge, La Goulue' was Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s first commissioned poster and it launched his poster-making career overnight.

Almost 3ft (90cm) wide and weighing a massive 710oz, this Edwardian wine cistern is marked for Garrard & Co, London, 1903.

This aristocratic survivor from the ‘brass and glass’ era of microscope making, a version of Powell & Lealand’s famous ‘No 1’ compound monocular and binocular microscope, is dated 1898.

Horace Pippin (1888-1946), a self-taught black US artist known for images of the First World War, biblical scenes and images of racial segregation, features at 'The Philadelphia Show' this year where his 1944 still-life 'The Love Note' is offered by M Hanks Gallery for $250,000.

Priced 10 cents when it appeared in 1938, a copy of Action Comics No 1 which introduced Superman has become the world’s most valuable comic book.

The invention of the megalethoscope by the Swiss-Italian optician and photographer Carlo Ponti greatly enhanced the experience of viewing photographs.

This Korean 10-panel folding screen made in the late 19th century in the final years of the Joseon period (1392- 1910) was offered on the second day of the recent Unreserved Sale at the Neal Auction Company (25/15% buyer’s premium).

During his travels to Europe, Winfield Robbins (1841-1910) amassed some 150,000 prints that he later left to his hometown of Arlington, Massachusetts.

Correct in detail, material and quality of construction, down to brass hardware, stencilled cloth and monogrammed leather trim’, a miniature Louis Vuitton trunk sold for $7500 (£5900) at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium).

A recent Brunk’s (23% buyer’s premium) auction in Asheville, North Carolina, included a group of six small oil-on-copper mythological scenes by Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1634-1705).

Snappy the Happy Bubble Blowing Dragon is a scarce battery-operated toy made by Marx in Japan in the 1960s.

This Herter Bros inlaid rosewood and upholstered slipper chair was part of a suite made for the Vanderbilt family c.1881-82.