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M1, one of the most sought-after UK registration numbers, set a new world record price for a car number plate when it sold for £300,000 at Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale of Sports, Competition and Collectors’ Motor Cars and Automobilia on July 7.

CINOA, the international confederation of art and antiques dealers, have put bringing on the next generation of the trade at the top of their agenda.

THE Design and Artist's Copyright Society (DACS) have made their first pay-outs to artists for the Droit de Suite resale levy.

THIS year's RICS conference will be in Cambridge from Friday to Sunday, September 15-17. More details to follow, but block out the dates in your diaries now.

An early 19th century boxwood and bone Napoleonic prisoner-of-war model of the Third Rate 74-gun HMS Mars fired a shot across the bows at Hampton & Littlewood's (15% buyer's premium) Maritime Sale in Exeter on June 21 when it set a new house record of £60,000.

Culture Minister David Lammy has placed a temporary export ban on a highly important George II Gothick japanned cabinet from Easton Neston.

THIS summer's Kensington Church Street Open Evening on June 29 proved a notable success for the many visitors who enjoyed the hospitality and company of the street's many dealers.

There was nothing dull or predictable about the coin sale at Spink on June 29 when an expectant crowd gathered to witness the sale of one of the rarest of English Medieval coins: the gold Double Leopard florin of Edward III which was minted for only a few months in 1344.

A COURT ruling means new Venice auction house San Marco can proceed with their July 8-9 sale - but only under strict conditions.

THE International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) are calling for a complete ban on the trade in ivory products on eBay - including antiques.

THE notorious map thief Edward Forbes Smiley III has appeared in court in the US where he admitted to stealing 97 antique maps worth more than $3m.

More suited to the wall than the bed and more a piece of social history than a functional textile, this 19th century appliqué felt coverlet reaped the rewards when it sold for £24,000 (plus premium) at Kerry Taylor auctions in association with Sotheby's on June 26.

Record turnover at London flagship sales but the buzz of the 1980s has gone

Compiled in the second half of the 15th century, the Fechtbuch of Hans Talhoffer (fl. 1435-82), the most celebrated and experienced fighting-master of the age, is a veritable encyclopaedia of medieval combat.

Bogus Angus McBean photographs have started to circulate this year. The fakes are clearly designed to cash in on a series of exhibitions about the famous surreal and theatrical photographer scheduled for July.

THE online registry of valuables Swift-Find have taken over the Trace database of stolen art and antiques. It means Invaluable are no longer conducting Due Diligence as part of their online services for auctioneers, dealers and collectors.

Given today’s obsession with celebrity, especially Royal celebrity, it was always on the cards that Christie’s sale last week of Princess Margaret’s jewellery, silver and other personal belongings was going to make much more than the £2m-3m predicted.

Before The Great War the Lincoln engineering company, William Foster and Co, was synonymous with the very best threshing machines. By 1918, managing director Sir William Tritton, together with Major W.G. Wilson, had been credited by the Royal Commission as the inventor of an armoured fighting vehicle forever known as the tank.

Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was one of the most notorious British commanders of the American Revolution. After leading a series of successful operations in both the north and south, he returned home after the war as one of the most famous men in England, sat for a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and began a long-term affair with actress and royal consort Mary Robinson.