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Drawn from life at Nelson’s home, Merton, just weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, this pastel portrait by the marine artist John Whichelo sold for £52,000 at Sotheby’s.

An extraordinary cache of 2794 Victorian farthings, all dated 1890, of the same type, and generally all in glorious mint state, have been consigned as lot 680 to Woolley & Wallis’s upcoming Silver and Collectors’ sale in Salisbury.

Dealers standing at fairs across the UK will soon face a 20% rise in stall rents as HM Revenue & Customs enforce new VAT rules.

An exceptional piece of 17th century Japanese export lacquer with a provenance to match has produced the highest auction price in France this year when it was sold to the Rijksmuseum for a hammer price of €5.9m (£5.26m).

Eton College is now the new home of the world’s most expensive football programme.

Olympia organisers Clarion Events have issued a warning to exhibitors after they were targeted by another of the scam guides so often reported on these pages.

At the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers biennial dinner at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge Paul Viney of Woolley & Wallis officially handed over the chairmanship of the association to Helen Carless, managing director of Lawrences Crewkerne.

New rules governing trade in the parts of endangered species will hit the antiques trade harder than first thought.

David Gonzalez, a builder and decorator in Hoffman, Minnesota, bought a small house on his own account for $10,100 and set to work on fixing it up for re-sale. Then he took down one of the walls and revealed a hidden treasure.

UK dealers and auction houses have been alerted to the theft of six oil paintings by Evie Hone from a church in Ireland.

Strong competition for a number of key works gave a major lift to the latest round of Old Master auctions in London.

Business is best if you are at the top of the tree, according to the latest survey published by the British Antique Dealers’ Association.

This remarkable 1773 longcase clock by Hugh Lough of Penrith proved the top-selling lot at Mitchells of Cockermouth when it sold at £19,000.

A new decree under French law has banned the mailing of banknotes, coins, jewellery and precious metals using the standard French postal system.

This c.1614 polychrome alabaster sculpture lost from a London church during the Blitz has been returned to its original location.

The price of gold has continued to drop, falling to its lowest level in almost three years, after the US Federal Reserve said it will be winding down its quantitative easing programme.

Fred Williams’ ‘You Yangs Landscape 1’ of 1963 made the highest price of the 89-lot sale of Australian art from the Reg Grundy and Joy Chambers-Grundy collection when it sold for Aus$1.9m (£1.2m).

A Suffolk-based jewellery dealer with over 30 years experience in the trade faces ruin after falling victim to a sophisticated robbery last month.

The two-day House & Garden Sale at Mallams in Abingdon, Oxfordshire saw this near pair of early 20th century Louis Vuitton ‘malle armoire secretaires’ sell for £24,000.