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Once a common sight on British streets and in public buildings, late Victorian and Edwardian cast-iron vending machines were scrapped for their metal content as they became obsolete or necessary for the war effort.

With a $10m estimate, what is being billed as the most important single lot of rock and pop memorabilia ever to come up for auction goes on view in London on April 18.

If ever there was a single record that could lay claim to truly starting the Rock and Roll era, it must be Elvis Presley’s first single ‘That’s all right (Mama)’, recorded in Memphis in July 5, 1954.

This exceptional Spanish flintlock sporting gun is dated 1739, but both the gun and case bear the arms of Pope Pius VII, whose papacy was dominated by the Vatican’s troubled relationship with France during the Napoleonic period nearly a century later.

Of more than 2000 different recorded horse brass designs, the most desirable are traditionally the so-called ‘merit awards’ given as prizes at working horse parades.

Sports clubs are being warned to be on their guard after the latest raid targeting trophies took place at the Goodwood Collection in West Sussex.

Papier-mâché pull-along models of bulldogs and terrier with nodding heads and growling mechanisms were popular amusements in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras – but it seems not all of the examples seen on the market today are quite so old.

One hestitates to contradict the great metaphysical poetic and theologian John Donne who believed that ‘death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes’.

The best Chinese works of art continue to prosper in the salerooms.

The annual cross-border customs figures have reinforced the United Kingdom’s status as one of the world’s two leading entrepot markets for art and antiques.

For those with Cornish ancestors or a general interest in the area’s history, David Lay’s sale of Part I of the Pendarve archive on March 26 in Penzance may well be of interest.

Over 130 lots of silverware that once graced the tables of the Durham Light Infantry’s officers’ mess are to be sold at auction to raise funds for a new bronze memorial statue for Durham.

Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis include this George III mahogany striking bracket clock by Robert Henderson, London in their sale on March 26.

This may look like your average 19th century vodka glass, but this tumbler descended through the family of a high-ranking Russian noble.

This pair of heavily carved Ibeji figures are one of the highlights at Webb’s Oceanic & African Arts sale on March 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Family tradition had it that this Mughal silver spice box was looted during the siege of Delhi in September 1857.

Chinese Girl – the iconic work from Vladimir Tretchikoff, the Russian émigré who settled in South Africa – was sold this week at Bonhams’ South African art sale in London for £840,000, to set a world record for the artist.

Back in April last year, Special Auction Services sold the Ron McCrindell collection including, as its headline lot, a Märklin spirit-fired, steam-powered battleship ‘HMS Terrible’.

Bassett-Lowke’s model of the bullet-nosed Pacific locomotive and tender, ‘The Coronation’, ranks among the rarest of all British toy trains.

This lead copy of Louis Weingartner’s 19th century bronze ‘Dryad and Boar’ was found hidden away in an overgrown garden before it was recently consigned to auction.