Collectables

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

When the first wave of Kenner Star Wars action figures began arriving on the market in 1978, the Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker figures came with ‘double telescoping’ light sabres.

In answer to the question “why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” mountaineer George Mallory, who died on it in 1924, famously replied “because it’s there”.

Only a few examples of the rare four-part British quad poster for the 1965 James Bond movie 'Thunderball' exist in uncut form.

MADAM – I sympathise with your correspondent Phil Higginbotham (Letters, ATG No 2335), who decries booksellers’ notes on endpapers.

The English-born political theorist Thomas Paine lived through the most turbulent of times.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

Aldine press books of the early 16th century, mostly it seems in a good but much later full morocco or calf bindings, produced a number of the higher bids in a recent Yorkshire sale.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 26-April 5, 2018.

MADAM – I did a double – no, triple – take when I read the article ‘First Doctor Who script up at auction’ in ATG No 2332.

MADAM – Have sellers of antiquarian books never considered the use of ‘Post-it’ notes? Do they not realise that pencil scribbles actually devalue the product that they are trying to sell?

None of the works by the Elizabethan poet, courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) were actually published in his lifetime.

A signed and dated 1839 first (second issue) of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby was one of many lots in a Heritage (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 7 that came from the library of James Seacrest, a Nebraska publisher and philanthropist, that were sold to benefit charities.

Deep snowdrifts accompanied the March 2 sale at Chippenham Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Wiltshire.