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GOLD reached a 27-year high last Friday thanks to the weakness of the US dollar, fears that it will continue to drop, and soaring oil prices. Other factors may include the pending Diwali Festival in India when it is traditional for people to give gifts of gold.

Asian Art in London celebrates its tenth anniversary from November 1 to 10 and as part of the anniversary celebrations will join with the British Museum to hold a Study Day around the exhibition The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army on November 10. Tickets for the day cost £22 (contact 0207 323 8181).

DATES for the launch of The Beijing International Chinese Antique Fair have been moved to November 30-December 4 from November 28 to December 2 as initially announced. This is described as an important Government project and, as such, special services for exhibitors and visitors are being arranged.

Top British art dealer Simon Dickinson was arrested by Customs authorities on September 14 in connection with the £17m sale of nine Dutch Old Master paintings to the Liechtenstein Museum.

Shanghai seems all the rage these days. Hot on the heels of the launch of two new international fairs — ShContemporary in early September, and the Shanghai Antiques & Jewellery Fair (October 13-21) — Artcurial are opening premises on Yongjia Lu, in the French Concession district of Shanghai, to stage lectures and exhibitions, as well as hosting an art bookshop — much along the lines of the firm’s Paris HQ at the Hôtel Dassault on the Champs-Elysées.

THE two teams line up following the annual cricket match between the Cotswolds Art & Antiques Dealers Association and the opposition, traditionally termed “The Rest of the World” but consisting largely of Thames Valley association dealers augmented by a contingent from Norfolk

Readers are advised to be wary of cut-price Whitefriars Drunken Bricklayer vases – they may be fakes.

Suffolk antique tool auctioneer Tony Murland (10% buyer’s premium) is known for his hyperbolic cataloguing but the description accompanying this nearly 400-year-old horn handled hunting knife was a classic.

AS Bloomsbury Auctions get set for the opening of their new saleroom in New York this month, their turnover for the first six months of 2007 showed a 45 per cent increase on the same period last year.

Bonhams, who have recently taken on a number of staff from Sotheby’s, have announced that Christie’s two most senior motoring directors and one of its motoring consultants will join their car department on November 1.

AT Bristol Crown Court last week Torquay art dealer Colin Stodgell was jailed for three years for income tax fraud amounting to £750,000 over seven years.

When Wales’ most popular 20th century artist Sir Kyffin Williams passed away last year he bequeathed the furniture from his Anglesey home to the University College of North Wales. Numerous pieces that the University did not require turned up in The Wales and West Country Sale at Bonhams Bath on June 25.

THIS George II walnut syphon tube wheel barometer by John Hallifax of Barnsley, c.1730, was one of the 209 lots from the Edwin Banfield collection offered by Dreweatt Neate of Donnington Priory on September 4. In a white glove sale all the lots found buyers.

Cheshire auctioneer Sir Patrick Cheyne will sell a remarkable cache of work by the Sheffield School watercolourist George Hamilton Constantine (1878-1967) on September 7.

This 18th century needlework panel appears to be a fragment of a work conceived on almost Bayeux Tapestry proportions.

Following the announcement in August of a newly-discovered 1938 fairground scene by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) scheduled to appear at Sotheby’s on December 13, it has emerged that the scene depicted is not, in fact, Beswick Fair, near Manchester, as had been mooted.

LONDON coins, medals and stamps specialists Spink have bought the American stamp auctioneers Shreves Philatelic Galleries.

Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull has been bought by a group of anonymous investors, which apparently includes himself, for its asking price of £50m.

NOBLE Investments, the publicly listed coins company and owners of Baldwin’s auctioneers, have branched out into the stamps market.

Leyburn auctioneers Tennants have standardised their buyer’s premium rates across their sales.