Auctions

An example of the first of America’s iconic silver dollars will be on sale at Spink USA later this month.

The bosses of a Berkshire auction house who defrauded customers of up to £250,000 have been found guilty of nine out of 11 charges.

A superb combination of history, condition and rarity came together as a figurehead from a Brazilian slavers’ ship sold at Essex saleroom Sworders for ten times the low estimate at £50,000.

Personal effects of Sir Winston Churchill, including the morocco dispatch box pictured here, were among the highlights of Sotheby’s highly publicised estate sale of his youngest child, the late Mary Soames.

Sherborne auctioneers Charterhouse are on a roll with Republican period (1911-49) porcelain.

More than half the receipts from Christie’s inaugural Exceptional sale in New York came from a single lot. And it was one with quite a history.

Appearing at a recent sale held by Toovey’s of Washington, West Sussex, this Imperial Qianlong famille rose and calligraphic vase sold for a house-record £520,000.

“It is a somewhat incoherent narrative, which, however, gives Lon Chaney an opportunity to turn up in an uncanny disguise and also to manifest his powers as Scotland Yard’s expert hypnotist. You are therefore treated to close-ups of Mr Chaney’s rolling orbs, which, fortunately, do not exert their influence on the audience.”

One of the best-loved of all of E.H. Shepard’s illustrations to the famous A.A. Milne books has set a saleroom record after selling for £260,000.

The stock of the Austrian-born British studio potter Lucie Rie (1902-95) continues to rise in the saleroom.

One of the greatest ‘barn finds’ ever has uncovered 60 classic cars – just one of which is a rare Ferraris valued at several million pounds – in outbuildings in the west of France.

Pre-war delivery vans advertising commercial brand names have long acquired trophy status in the Dinky toy market.

It was, say Timeline Auctions, “probably the most important medieval seal to come to market” and certainly the most important object the firm had ever offered for sale, according to CEO Brett Hammond.

The outstanding lot of the latest Old Master auction series in London, ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), was knocked down at £27m at Sotheby’s evening sale, setting a record price for the artist.

James Watson’s 1962 award for his work on DNA set a world record price for a Nobel Prize Medal at Christie’s in New York when it sold for $4.1m (£2.6m) hammer.

Nantwich auctioneers Peter Wilson set a new house record at their latest sale with this large Qianlong (1736-95) mark-and-period doucai ‘lotus and bats’ jar and cover.

This copper-gilt coffin plate, bearing an inscription in Latin with the dates of Oliver Cromwell’s birth, death and inauguration as Lord Protector and the arms of the Protectorate to the reverse, was found when his body was exhumed from the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey on January 26, 1661.

Among the most important Asian works of art to come to market in the modern collecting era, an Imperial Ming dynasty embroidered silk thangka sold for HK$310m (£27m) at a Christie’s latest Chinese art series in Hong Kong.

Christie’s New York are offering the 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal awarded to Dr James D. Watson, one of the world’s greatest living scientists.

The £40,000 corkscrew with an old London Bridge connection sold by auctioneers Reeman Dansie on November 26 is an extremely rare Victorian patent.