Auctions

In a marketplace seriously in need of entry-level collectors, the great majority of Royal Doulton character jugs and HN series figures are worth under £100 – and most of them less than £30 when sold without reserve at auction.

A local 90-year-old gentleman and his wife were in the room to watch his childhood toy sell for a small fortune at W. & H. Peacock’s recent ‘Memories of Childhood’ sale in Bedford.

It is doubtless the source of a little irritation, or perhaps amusement, to members of the men-only Flyfishers Club of Piccadilly that the two largest salmon ever caught with a rod and line in British waters were both landed by women.

Mallams’ Gentleman’s Library Sale in Oxford on October 31 will be the first to benefit from a new the-saleroom.com delivery service.

This 2ft 5in x 2ft ½in (75 x 62cm) bust length portrait drew the attention of a number of bidders with a particular interest in historical pictures when it appeared at auction in Dorchester.

The eagerly anticipated auction of Underground posters direct from the archives of London Transport Museum was a sell-out at Christie’s South Kensington earlier this month.

This large, scratch-built 5in gauge Great Western Railway locomotive is one of two being sold at Lawrences of Crewkerne on November 2, with both expected to realise £3000-4000.

A house visit in north Derbyshire unearthed a treasure trove, with every room cluttered with porcelain figures.

This first edition, first issue of ‘The Great Gatsby’ from 1922 is one of the star lots in a sale described by Bloomsbury Auctions as “one of the most important collections of modern first editions to come onto the market in the last ten years”.

Despite being called a ‘Black Forest’ carving, this late 19th century figure by Johann Huggler of Brienz, of a poacher with dead deer, gun and a dog at his feet, the base carved with rabbits and birds, was actually produced in Switzerland rather than Bavaria.

Edward S. Curtis’ monumental photographic study of ‘The North American Indian’ was one of the most expensive and ambitious undertakings in the history of book production, comprising 20 illustrated text volumes and 20 folios of larger photographic plates.

Although originally entered into one of the regular weekly sales held by Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet, this striking mid-century glass vessel was plucked from obscurity by a member of staff who recognised it as something worthy of further research.

This year’s Frieze week auction totals in London were largely consistent with 2011, but the much-publicised sale of Eric Clapton’s prize abstract by Gerhard Richter (b.1932) proved crucial in bolstering the overall figures.

Rare early paintings often come to major centres such as London, Paris and New York but later this month it will be the turn of Marseille in the South of France where the Maison de Ventes Leclere will offer a chance to purchase a fragment of an Italian primitive from the early Renaissance.

By the late 17th century, Port Royal, located at the end of the Palisadoes at the mouth of Kingston Harbour in south-eastern Jamaica, had earned the reputation of being both the richest and the wickedest city in the world.

Previously only known from a 1910 print and unrecorded for half a century, this 20in x 2ft 6in (50 x 75cm) oil by John William Godward (1861-1922) was sold by Lawrences in Crewkerne on October 12.

Works of art by architect-designer William Burges (1827-1881) are extremely rare – but serendipity has seen half a dozen pieces emerge recently in the regions.

Fine and unusual English guns made for Indian princes formed the most lucrative sub-section of Holt’s latest London sale.

Cotswold auctioneers Tayler and Fletcher are to hold their first live internet auction of Asian and Oriental art and antiques on October 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

This Dinky pre-War delivery van advertising Maison De Bonneterie’s flagship department store in Amsterdam will appear at Vectis in Thornaby, near Stockton-on-Tees on October 17.