Auctions

Collectors have known about the possible existence of an unseen mechanical money bank by J. & E. Stevens of Connecticut for more than half a century. It’s just that one had never turned up – until now.

Bloomsbury Auctions enjoyed stellar success with their single-owner sale of caricatures, costume and sporting prints, including this image of the king’s mistress.

This rust-tinged enamelled sheet iron sign was sold for £31,500 at Summers Place Auctions’ latest sale in Billingshurst, West Sussex.

Gents of Leicester, the first company to market electric bells in the UK, began to produce the electric clock system, known eventually as the Pulsynetic in the first decade of the 20th century.

One of lots drawing a decent competition at the Adam’s sale at Slane Castle last month was a pair of chalk portraits by Robert Healy (c.1743-71).

A new record for any work of art sold in New Zealand was set when Webb’s in Auckland sold this pair of 19th century Chinese carved rhinoceros horns for NZ$680,000 (£375,700).

The large volumes of money being spent in the Contemporary art market continued at Sotheby’s last night as the auctioneers posted their highest ever total for a single sale.

Saleroom history was made in New York last night as Francis Bacon’s 'Three Studies Of Lucian Freud' set a new high for any lot ever sold at auction.

It is not often that auctioneer Graham Budd finds his name splashed over the front pages of Estonian newspapers but when a particular group of cycling memorabilia came up at his November 4-5 sale it is exactly what happened.

Campaigners against the sale of 24 items of Chinese ceramics from Croydon council’s Riesco Collection were in a race against time to raise money for their judicial review.

This Yongzheng yellow and green enamel vase was the highest-selling lot from the week-long auction series of Asian art held in London.

A thin head by Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) was one of a handful of market-fresh works that helped lift the latest Impressionist & Modern art sales in New York.

This remarkable fossil of one of the largest animals ever to have walked the Earth becomes the first large dinosaur skeleton to be offered at auction in the UK at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, on November 27.

Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex had to postpone last week’s Interiors sale after the St Jude’s storm knocked out their electricity supply for two days.

Size, quality, condition and subject matter are the ingredients by which Berlin porcelain plaques are judged.

As with many areas of collectable ceramics, the marketplace for Sylvac animals has been rather muted in recent times. But, if prices have flat-lined for most pieces then there are still collectors waiting in the wings should something truly rare present itself.

A major bidding competition arose in Edinburgh last week as auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull offered this Old Master painting as part of their sale of contents from Lingholm House in Cumbria.

Little did “the Reverend Dr Walter Blandford Warden of Wadham Colledge” of Oxford University realise that one day his name would have such significance in the world of newspapers.

The violin played by Titanic bandmaster Wallace Hartley as the ship slid beneath the waves on the morning of April 15, 1912, was always going to a) attract massive worldwide interest and b) bring in the big bucks at auction.

Sworders have sold the contents of Debden Manor, Essex from their saleroom in Stansted Mountfitchet – a house sale titled ‘An Architect’s Eye, A Collector’s Passion’.