East Midlands

An item of local interest to bidders at Bamfords in Derby was this 18th century account book for Radbourne Hall, the seat of the Chandos-Pole family.

A George III gold pair cased pocket watch gave a strong start to the Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium) November 4 sale (brought forward a day to avoid lockdown restrictions).

An 1859 first of Darwin’s seminal work shrugs off condition issues to be a best-seller

In family ownership for several generations, this 27oz Charles II sugar box was described by Nottingham auction house Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) as “in an exceptional state of preservation, with hardly any sign of wear and no damage or repair worthy of note”.

The invention of the gauger’s slide rule in the 1680s is generally credited to one Thomas Everard of Southampton.

Economic stimulus packages are not a new phenomenon. Georg Siegmund Stobwasser (1717-76) was among the many craftsmen attracted to the Brunswick by the special privileges granted them in the city by Duke Karl I (1713-80) in the wake of the Seven Years’ War.

Furniture dealership Early Oak has moved from Burford in the Cotswolds to a more central location for all its UK buyers in Harringworth, near Northamptonshire’s border with Rutland.

Focus on how one antiques centre survived and now thrives by being prepared to adapt

This sailor’s walking cane below displays many elements of the scrimshander’s art: a whalebone shaft carved with spiral fluting, collars inlaid with shell from the hawksbill turtle and a handle carved as a dove from the tooth of a sperm whale.

The best-known press-moulded models made by John Derbyshire at the Regent Road Flint Glassworks in Salford are the series of animal and figural paperweights made in frosted, flint and coloured glass.

The centuries-old Indonesian habit of chewing betel nut, the fruit of the reach palm, was quickly adopted by settlers from the Dutch East India Company who appreciated both its psychoactive properties and its importance as a local social ritual.

An ancient Egyptian granite statue has been sold to the City of Leicester from the collection of travel business Thomas Cook in a deal negotiated by London dealers Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch.

Nestlé, today a Swiss multinational corporation, was a much smaller company when this rare lithographed showcard was made.

Keeping score in the earliest days of the Football League was not as easy as checking the internet.

While Manchester United and early FA Cup match programmes often make the big money at auction, a group on offer at a West Sussex saleroom showed that far less famous names can also make the running.