International

Back in early 2010 when an Apple I computer sold on eBay for $50,000 it was regarded by the vintage computer fraternity as a gross over-valuation – but by December 2010 another had fetched £110,000 in a Christie’s book sale.

ROUND UP: The pick of three lots of classic jewellery at Sotheby’s latest antiquities sale in New York from the collection built by Jan Mitchell was this 4th century BC Greek gold wreath of two olive branches bound with shoots of ribbed leaves and berries.

Australian auction house Leonard Joel have made a public challenge to competitors by offering a 105% return to sellers for the higher end of the market.

A federal judge has declared the 1977 California Resale Royalty Act unconstitutional.

The auction business often runs counter-cyclical to wider economic fortunes, so it’s no great surprise that the strong results posted in 2011 by many of Britain’s regional auctioneers have been mirrored across the Atlantic.

A new insurance company are trying to plug what they see as a gap in the market for auction guarantees between $10,000 and $1.5m.

Soon after the gallery doors close at the BRUNEAF fair in Brussels on June 10 all eyes turn to Paris where Christie’s and Sotheby’s will hold major African and Oceanic sales on succeeding days.

A string of record prices for leading names in the Contemporary art market saw the amount of money raised in the latest New York auction series heading back to boom-time levels.

Setting a record any post-War work of art ever sold at auction, Mark Rothko’s (1903-1970) oil on canvas 'Orange, Red, Yellow' sold for $77.5m (£50m) at Christie’s Contemporary art evening sale on May 8.

The latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York will forever be remembered as ‘The Scream’ series.

THE State of California has recently begun to strictly enforce a law banning the sale of ivory regardless of age. Dealers and auctioneers offering antiques made from ivory or including ivory among their constituent parts have had merchandise seized.

ATG Media, parent company of Antiques Trade Gazette has been named as one of the Top 100 companies in Europe in the Red Herring Awards, which celebrate innovation and technology in business.

IT was the five o’clock shadow that gave it away. When London dealer Philip Mould spotted this 18th century portrait in a general paintings sale at the New York auctioneers Thomas Cornell Galleries in November last year, he thought it to be of a rather masculine middle-aged lady.

WORKERS restoring an 18th century house in St Petersburg have unearthed an extraordinary cache of Tsarist-era artefacts once owned by one of Russia’s most prominent noble families.

SOTHEBY’S concluded their latest Hong Kong series of sales on April 4, raising a premium-inclusive total of over HK$2.46bn (£212.5m) for the eight sales containing over 2780 lots.

LEADING US regional saleroom Skinner are to launch an online-only auction platform.

LARGE new gallery spaces in Hong Kong look set to provide the battleground in the competition for private treaty sales between Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

NEW York has just seen the greatest dispersal ever of Jewish coins and coins relating to the history of the Jewish people.

IT may sound a little gimmicky, but one of the most captivating TEFAF exhibits this year was an animated version of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s Vase With Flowers in a Window by the contemporary artists Rob and Nick Carter on the stand of London’s Fine Art Society.

TOTAL auction sales in France rose by 8.6 per cent in 2011 to €2.38bn. Art, antiques and other collectors' sales accounted for just over half that figure at €1.25bn, a record total that surpassed the boom years of 2006 and 2007, as well as 2009 when the Yves St Laurent sale at Christie's in Paris gave a huge boost in what was otherwise a lacklustre year.