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Anxious to arrest declining saleroom audiences, Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, New Jersey, chose to axe the buyer’s premium for bidders in the room for their sale on March 16.

Stuttgart auctioneers Nagel achieved a new German auction record for Oriental art when they sold a Yongzheng mark and period wine pot and cover for €2.8m (£2.37m).

It has to go down as one of the great car boot fair finds of all time. On June 26, Christie’s South Kensington will offer for sale this Breitling Top Time wristwatch, worn by Sean Connery in ‘Thunderball’.

Paul Aitken, CEO of asset loan specialist borro, has revealed that art and antiques now account for 42% of the company’s loan book by value, with the more traditional asset loan categories of jewellery, watches and gold accounting for 48% and luxury and classic cars 10%.

A UK-based businessman has been arrested on suspicion of looting Egyptian artefacts after he consigned several items into a Christie’s antiquities sale in London.

The inaugural sale held by new London-based musical instrument auctioneers Ingles & Hayday generated a £2.26m total from 150 lots.

A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone containing personal annotations and illustrations by author J.K. Rowling’s fetched £150,000 at a charity auction held at Sotheby’s in London last night.

A demand from the National Archives for lots to be withdrawn from auction at Tennants of Leyburn could have wider implications for the trade in historical documents.

Almost exactly a year after Graham Budd set a record for any football programme at auction he has done it again.

The name of 83-year-old Sister Wendy Beckett, reclusive nun and famous TV art critic, doesn’t always meet a raptuorous response in the art world, but there is no doubt that the public at large love her.

Possibly dating from the reign of Louis XIV, this fine boulle casket and stand was among an assortment of jewellery, silver, furniture and pictures at Thomas R. Callan’s sale in Ayr, south west Scotland.

Dealers in New York can no longer use works consigned to them for sale by artists – or monies raised from their sale, beyond their own commissions – as debt collateral.

Dreweatts will be conducting the first auction of a complete RHS Chelsea garden during this year’s flower show.

A new and alarming scam guide is targeting the trade with demands linked to European Union regulations and focusing on VAT.

Billed as “the most important early printed book to be offered this century”, a deluxe vellum copy of the ‘Opera’ of Virgil is being offered at Christie’s on June 12.

Christie’s evening sale of Contemporary art in New York last night posted a hammer total of $435.5m (£294.2m).

Barnett Newman (1905-70) and Gerhard Richter (b.1932) starred at Sotheby’s evening sale of Contemporary art last night as the run of strong performing sales in this sector showed little sign of abating.

Holding a major silver sale days after the melt price has plummeted by about £3 an ounce is hardly ideal timing.

Sotheby’s lost $22.3m from January to March 2013, more than twice the amount for the same period in 2012.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Decorative Arts was this copper and brass electrolier made in the workshops of the designer and architect William Arthur Smith Benson c.1900.