Collectables

One of the more unusual corkscrews to come onto what is a fiercely competitive collectors’ market recently was a brass, steel and wooden contraption of the type one may have seen clamped to the bar of fin-de-siècle brasseries.

High-priced luxury handbags and other luxury goods made the most money at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sale of Costume, Accessories and Textiles at Leyburn but collectors’ interest was more focused on a private collection of hat pins.

Raising around $11m including premiums, a November 15-17 comics and comic art sale held by Heritage Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Dallas included many of the usual super-hero star turns – but this time the big seller was something rather different.

Prices for the best British automobilia are slowly catching up with the huge sums regularly paid for advertising and promotional material in the US.

In its short nine-sale history, Kingham & Orme (22% buyer’s premium) has experienced considerable success selling fans, 55 of which were included in the October 5-6 mammoth sale attracting bids from round the world. Many were of museum quality.

An ensemble of fans both Oriental and Occidental is the subject of the dedicated sale organised by Coutau-Bégarie that takes place at Drouot on November 19. Examples date from the 17th century through to the early years of the 20th.

In the long history of beer, the can is a relative newcomer. The first canned beer came with the end of Prohibition in the US – the shiny new light-weight packaging used by Krueger’s in Richmond, Virgina, to market a pasteurised beverage from January 1935.

Despite the fact that smoking cigarettes has been ostracised, the rise in interest for vintage smoking paraphernalia has increased.

In the UK Huntley and Palmers and McVitie’s might be the brand names to trip off the tongue at the mention of the word biscuit. In France it is LU that first comes to mind.