Auctioneers

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period March 9-15, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

The taxidermy market continues to grow – particularly for showpiece lots such as the Bengal tiger’s head offered at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium) of Winchester on February 8.

A select sale of just 31 lots of Asian art assembled by a Japanese collector and his sons raised a recordbreaking $262.8m (£215.5m) at Christie’s New York on March 15. It made more in a single evening than any New York Asian sale series.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning lots fall flat... but annotated Dorian Gray leaves treble the estimate

Typewriters on which famous books came into existence have featured on these pages before, but not for some time – and certainly not machines of a kind that that continue to be used by their owner to this day.

The diverse collection of Jeffrey M Kaplan is making various appearances under the hammer this spring.

A crease that runs around the lower part of the dust jacket detracts somewhat from the appeal of a first impression copy of the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books, Casino Royale of 1953, but it sold for £16,000 in a March 1 sale held by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Possibly the first printed reference to a ‘Great White’ shark attack is found in a four-page pamphlet, printed in Naples in 1721, from which the woodcut shown here is taken.

Dealers and fairs are embracing the ‘mix it up’ approach to offering a wide range of styles and eras, as noted in our BADA fair preview (ATG No 2282).

With BBC Radio 4 currently offering a season of programmes focusing on the Red Planet in fact and fiction, a couple of books from the Edgar Rice Burroughs series of Martian fantasies that made high prices in a recent US sale are an appropriate choice for these reports.

Rare painting by 19th century American artist achieves record price at Bonhams