James Bond 007: Licensed To Make Collectors Of Us

I grew up with James Bond. I read all Ian Fleming’s novels, I’ve seen all the Bond films. I even wear an Omega Seamaster wristwatch like my hero. Last week, in a Christie’s charity auction in conjunction with UK Bond film makers EON Productions, the watch worn by Daniel Craig in the new blockbuster Skyfall sold for a cool £157,250.

Out of most people’s reach, granted, but it was very special: a unique automatic Omega Seamaster Professional “Planet Ocean” watch made in titanium specially for the action scenes, sold to benefit ORBIS, the charity fighting blindness worldwide.

But even that paled alongside the star lot: the Aston Martin DBS used by Craig in Quantum Of Solace and sold to benefit

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Stuff U Sell makes eBay selling simple

I wrote to a reader last week,  a lady who wanted to know how best to sell a silk head scarf from the 1976 Canadian Olympics. Either sold as a souvenir, or else perhaps given to competitors, the scarf was printed with the Olympic torch and listings of all the events.

Ironically, I came across the scarf, illustrated here, in a sale at The Canterbury Auction Galleries, also last week. Commemorating the "Olympic Winners of XIV Olympiad, London 1948", it was described as having been designed by Ena Pitfield, devised by Arnold Lever and printed

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Monthly auctions, home of the bargain hunter

Technorati Tags: Auctions , Bargain hunting

IT'S A  bit like school. You study hard (in theory anyway), pass countless exams (hopefully) and over time, pick the subjects you like best. Then, if everything goes to plan, higher education beckons. Now's the time to specialise.

Be transported by slideshow to the saleroom

To the exclusion of everything else (well, almost everything) you're concentrating now on one subject alone. You're mixing with like-minded individuals and despite the competition, the tuition you received in earlier years pays dividends.

Ironically, so it is with fine art auction sales. With bidding sometimes rising at the rate of £1,000 a time, to the uninitiated, they can be as scary as the first day at a new school. So how do you become initiated? Actually, it's simple: like any learning, you start in the junior class, although in this case, they're called general sales.

Almost every auctioneer in the country has them. They might be disguised as something

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Golf clubs auction set to score hole in one

At the outset, let me make it clear I am not a golfer, nor do I have any desire to become one.

That said, I could become an armchair golfer, or rather a collector of the implements associated with the sport. My interest stems from watching an auction of golfing memorabilia some years ago in which a single golf club sold for a record £49,000.

Dating from the earliest days of golf, the club had been made by a blacksmith, so it was pretty crude, to say the least. It was discovered in a garden shed in Edinburgh and the story made international headlines.

It was not unlike the "Very Early and Important Square Toe Light Iron, circa 1600" pictured in the slideshow here. Indeed, it may be the very same club. Either way, prices have spiralled in the meantime.Read more »

Britons flock to online auction sales

Fourteen per cent of adult Britons who use the internet made their most recent online purchase from an auction site according to a survey by Apacs, the UK payments association. I bet I know which auction site ... which is why I'm not surprised when fees for buyers and sellers keep rising. Problem is, there seems to be no serious alternative.

eBay robots - the latest weapons in scammer wars

eBay scam latest: I learned something new today - eBay power sellers use bots (web robots) to post hundreds of sales offering "Buy it Now" stuff such as e-books, digital photos and Windows wallpaper for a penny (or a cent). It's all delivered digitally, but automating the process is the only way the sellers can make any money.

When a buyer clicks to buy and pays up, the bot is programmed to automatically email the product and at the same time, a standard generic positive feedback notice which is recorded on the buyer's profile.

Impressed at the quality and speed of the service, the buyer responds with positive feedback for the vendor and everyone is happy. And so are the scammers.

Now the crooks have got wise to the system. They use similar bots to create a large number of fake buyers' accounts and to locate and purchase the digitally delivered cheapo stuff, thus building up convincing amounts of positive feedback.

The rest is obvious. They then set up bogus sales for valuable kit that doesn't exist, rake in the proceeds and vanish.

Time was when it was enough to simply check that a seller had a good level of positive feedback to feel comfortable about buying from him. Now it's becoming increasingly important to check out exactly what goods the feedback relates to. If you find lots of 1p purchases listed - steer clear.

Titanic memorabilia prices show no signs of sinking

Prices for Titanic memorabilia continue to spiral. In a Christie's sale in New York yesterday (Thursday June 1) a painted bronze flag with the insignia of the White Star line - owners of the liner - sold together with a Titanic name board from one of the lifeboats that carried passengers to safety after April 14, 1912 sinking sold for £38,600 ($72 000). They had been estimated at £27,000-38,000 ($50 000-70 000). A "Liverpool" port sign and another bronze Titanic name board, sold together for £32,000 ($60,000).

Auction chance to own trophy awarded to triple Derby winning Cheshire greyhound

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In his heyday Cheshire's Rushton Mac was acclaimed as the best English-bred greyhound ever. Having achieved a trio of victories in the English, Welsh and Scottish Derbies; recorded wins in 14 successive races and posted five track records, the description was beyond doubt.

Now, 50 years later, the magnificent silver trophy presented by the Greyhound Racing Association for Mac's 1955 English Greyhound Derby win is to be sold. Chester fine art and antiques auctioneers Byrne's will offer the trophy together with Mac's trap No. 2 jacket worn for the race; the winner's jacket worn by the dog during the subsequent parade and presentation, a photograph of the trophy presentation; an original race card from the meeting held on June 25 1955 and one of Mac's stud cards. The collection is expected to fetch up to £3,000 when it is sold on the second of a two-day sale on Wednesday and Thursday, December 7 and 8.

Rushton Mac was bred out of Rushton News and Rushton Panda by the late Mr Frank Johnson and his wife Mary at Boothouse Farm, Rushton, in Tarporley, Cheshire, where they ran a greyhound stud and licensed training facility. Mr Johnson’s son, Peter, a retired farmer from Wrenbury, is selling the collection. He said greyhound breeding and racing was the great love of his parents' lives.

"Boothouse was a small farm on the Oulton Park estate and they started greyhound racing with a bitch named Fly Joan soon after they were married in the early 1940s. They were granted a licence to train dogs on their own account in1953 and by then they were travelling to races all over the country," Peter Johnson said.

"My sister, Ann, and I were always being bundled into the back of a van with the dogs and we used to help at the tracks. It was so exciting when we came home as winners. It was very unusual to run English-bred greyhounds because in those days most were bred in Ireland."

Mac's track record was unique. Apart from being a triple Derby winner in 1955, the grandson of Fly Joan, the Johnson's original dog, Mac was awarded Silver Greyhounds in 1954 and 1955 for Best English Bred Greyhound.

A contemporary report of the English Derby run at the famous White City Stadium in London, said that "early round results implied this was a two dog race and the betting reflected this. While Rushton Mac was a well backed 5/2 shot, the clear odds on 1/2 favourite was the three dog Barrowside. All seemed well for favourite backers as Barrowside led from the boxes, with Home Straight and Rushton Mac following closely behind. Barrowside went wide at the first providing Rushton with the opportunity on the inside. Down the back straight Rushton maintained a length lead, always challenged by Barrowside, and these went clear of the others led by Home Straight and Coolkill Chieftain. Around the fourth bend Ruston was still in the lead as Barrowside mounted a strong challenge, but Rushton held on by three-quarters of a length, with the pair some four and a half lengths ahead of the fast finishing Coolkill Chieftain.

Mac was retired and put to stud in late 1956 or early 1957 having won more than £8,500 in prize money. Mr and Mrs Johnson retired in the early Sixties and the trophy and archive has remained in the family since. By the important London silversmith Garrard & Company, it weighs a whopping 64½ ounces and comes complete with turned wooden socle and fitted mahogany case.

The trophy and archive is one highlight in Byrne’s sale of more than 850 lots of fine art and antiques from various owners. The sale starts at 12 noon and is on view on Sunday December 4 from 11am to 2pm; on Monday December 5 from 10am to 5pm; Tuesday December 6 from 10am to 7pm and on the morning of the sale from 9am. Catalogues, price £8 (including postage) are available from the auctioneers and can be viewed online at www.byrnesauctioneers.com.

Sneaky schoolgirl’s signed Beatles picture set to sell for £2,000

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As a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Lynne Peters couldn't believe her luck when a backstage helper sneaked her and her sister into the back of the theatre to watch The Beatles play live on stage.

When he came back after the show with a photograph signed by each of the Fab Four, she was ecstatic and the photograph -- a page from the girls' comic "Boyfriend" -- was given pride of place in her bedroom.

The year was 1963 and Beatlemania was sweeping the country, but John Paul George and Ringo were still coming to terms with their new-found fame. So unaccustomed was he to signing autographs, Ringo started to write Richard Starkey, but hurriedly crossed it out to replace it with his stage name.

Now, more than 40 years later, that autographed page is valuable. When Chester auctioneers Byrne's sell it on Wednesday, December 7, they expect a clamour from collectors of Beatles memorabilia and a selling price of £2,000-3,000, possibly more.

Mrs Peters, now a 56-year-old Chester housewife, said she was amazed that the picture was so valuable. Recalling the mild spring evening when her father took her and her younger sister, Denise, ticketless, to see The Beatles, she said that at first they were among a huge crowd of fans milling about outside the Royalty Theatre, in City Road, Chester, where the group was topping the bill.

"Someone spotted the boys in the Chinese restaurant opposite the theatre,” she said. “Chaos erupted and we were part of a wave of screaming, ecstatic fans, trying to get to them. The boys were mobbed as they tried to get back to the theatre as the fans and surged back and forth, hoping to touch them.

"Somehow, they got back inside the theatre in one piece to begin what was to become an unforgettable early Beatles show for me. My father knew one of the backstage helpers who said he would be able to get as tickets. But it was a sell-out and so we had to wait in the foyer while everyone filed past is to take their seats. But the helper said he'd get us in and he sneaked us through the doors on the balcony and told us to stand at the back. It didn't matter that we didn't have seats, because everyone was on their feet throughout the concert.

"The curtains rose to the opening bars of "Please Please Me" and brought an electrified wave of shouting, screaming, ecstatic, mainly teenage fans to the front of the balcony. Numbers such as "Love Me Do", "When I Saw Her Standing There" and many others were the prelude to a grand finale where the boys brought the house down belting out the unforgettable "She Loves You". Coming back on stage several times to pay tribute to us adoring fans, The Beatles brought the curtain down on an evening forever emblazoned on my memory.

"Before he left us, I'd given the stagehand the page from my comic, which my dad had pasted onto a piece of hardboard, and I asked him to try to get me their autographs. When my dad picked us up outside the theatre, the stagehand came out and I couldn't believe it, they'd all signed it. I took it to school to show my friends and it was then I realised that Ringo had started off by signing it Richard Starkey, but then he had crossed it out.

"I've treasured it ever since but lately it's been kept in a wardrobe wrapped up carefully to protect it, so I decided that now is the time to sell it and let someone else from a younger generation enjoy it as I have."

Byrne's annual pre-Christmas sale includes antique furniture, fine jewellery, silver, ceramics, objets d'art, pictures and collectors' ceramics, notably a good single-owner collection of Clarice Cliff, militaria, toys and dolls and other collectables.

The sale starts at 11am and is on view on Sunday December 4 from 10am to 3pm; on Monday and Tuesday December 25 and 6 from 9am to 5pm and on the morning of the sale from 9am. Catalogues, price £6 (including postage) are available from the auctioneers and can be viewed online at www.byrnesauctioneers.co.uk.

Byrne’s fine art auctioneers, the North West’s most dynamic auction
house, was founded by Jo Boucher and Adrian Byrne, formerly of Hall’s
auctioneers, Shrewsbury. Byrne’s conducts 20 sales a year from a
prestigious listed mansion house in Chester’s Watergate Street, the
former location of Sotheby’s North West regional saleroom, and latterly
a Hall’s saleroom which Jo and Adrian took over in 2003.

More information from Byrne's on 01244 312300.

Auction chance to give Smuggers a new home

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Rare Steiff Teddy bear is star of Christmas collectors' sale

The little boys looked forward to family trips from their home in Vienna to visit their three aunts in Düsseldorf, but not necessarily to see the matronly trio with their smothering hugs and embarrassing kisses.

Instead, the visits meant the three nephews got the chance to play with Smuggers, a magnificent and expensive Teddy bear - christened so because of the smug look on his face - which was purchased specially to amuse the boys when they grew bored.

But the visits were few and far between and so in the intervening years Smuggers sat in a cupboard which explains his as-new condition - all the more remarkable considering he was born in 1903.

Now Smuggers is about to start a new life. Passed though the family to the present Canterbury owner, he is one of the stars among a gleeful group of toys and dolls in the annual Christmas auction of antiques and collectors' items at The Canterbury Auction Galleries. The sale is on Tuesday December 6.

A product of the German soft toy company founded in 1847 by Margete Steiff, Smuggers stands just short of 12 inches and has a plush mohair coat, eyes made from black shoe buttons and the characteristic brass ear tag Steiff trademark. He's yours for £1,500-2,000.

More information from The Canterbury Auction Galleries on 01227 763337.

Antique price guides - one way of selling with certainty

by Christopher Proudlove©
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There are two certainties in life: death and taxes. It's an oft repeated truism, but I'd like to add a third: selling one's possessions -- as often as not the result of the other two.

But as I'm learning myself -- and, I might add, to my cost - that selling stuff for the right price ain't easy.

Any fool can buy, all you need is cash. But parting with the treasures you've lived with over the years can be a painful experience. Getting back what you paid for them, or better still, making a little profit, takes away some of the sting, but move house as we did recently leaves little time to negotiate the best deals.

Getting rid of junk is easy -- stick it in the back of the car, and take it to the nearest dump. Or if you fancy a little entrepreneurial flutter, drive it to a car boot sale and flog it off. Just be prepared to sell it cheap.

What happens if you've got something special? Good question.

There are basically three options: sell it by auction; sell it to a dealer or sell it to a collector.

A priority before making the choice is to know (or find out) ahead of time what the stuff is worth.

It also helps to know what the things cost in the first place. The difficulty here is that you may not have purchased them yourself. Perhaps aan object was a gift, perhaps it was an inheritance, either way you'll never know what it cost.

Own a collection of objects and the nightmare is multiplied by the number of pieces the collection contains.

So, the first move should probably be to seek opinions. Sell a house and if you've got any sense, you'll ask two or three estate agents for a valuation before selecting which one to go with.

So it is with selling antiques. Show the piece to preferably two auctioneers and two dealers and get a ballpark figure.

Be careful not to hawk the object around too widely. By doing so you stand the risk of over-exposing it -- the trade describe the object as having been "burnt" -- with a sometimes disastrous effect on its likely selling price.

If the ballpark figure is acceptable, than the choice is relatively simple. Needless to say, however, the sailing can be far from plain.

The auctioneer may well have said flatteringly that your granny's vase is worth £2000-3000, but will his buyers agree? His estimation of it's worth will be based on past experience of selling similar objects, but the proof of the pudding will be when the hammer falls at the sale.

Also, it's important to remember the auctioneer's commission charges, levied by him to help cover his costs. This varies from saleroom to saleroom from as low as 8% to as high as 20%.

Add to that charges for carriage, photography, the iniquitous so-called lotting charge levied by some, and the size of your cheque can be somewhat less than you anticipated unless you did your homework first.

Then, of course, the piece might not sell, and to make matters worse, the auctioneer might charge you an unsold fee. As in any business of this nature, be sure to read and understand the auctioneer's conditions of business.

The upside to an auction is the competitive nature of the bidding. If the right buyers are there at the right time and they want the object you're selling, then there is no upper limit to the price it might achieve.

One essential for the budding antiques valuer -- and anyone considering selling anything old -- is a good antiques price guide. There are dozens on the market. Two names stand out among the best: Judith Miller and Miller's.

Time was when the two names were synonymous. Then Judith branched out on her own and formed The Price Guide Company whose guides are published by Dorling Kindersley Ltd.

Miller's, meanwhile, is now a division of Mitchell Beazley and uses a number of guest editors to produce guides on every subject imaginable.

The products of both companies make fascinating reading and ideal coffee table books for the enthusiast and beginner alike.

Flicking through their pages, it's hard to avoid sucking the air through one's teeth thinking good heavens, is it really worth that much? or Wow, I got mine for a fraction of that price.

Remember though that these are price guides, not price lists. They are "based on" actual prices realised had auction or offered for sale by a dealer.

Problem is, they are out of date as soon as they're printed. Fashions change, trends vary, and no one likes paying more than they have to for anything, so the prices quoted -- which in the case of the auction houses includes buyers' premium -- need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

A big selling point for both -- and a feature which makes them extremely handy -- is the addition of explanatory footnotes and snap-shot features giving brief but valuable details about manufacturers and their products that would otherwise take hours of research to uncover.

Selling to a dealer is comparatively simple. Strike a deal leaving room for profit for him and a agreeing satisfactory price for you and he'll give you cash in hand on the day with no charges and no worry that the object might come back to you when it doesn't sell.

But how do you know the value the auctioneer is estimating or the price the dealer is offering is a fair one?

The answer is to do your homework first.

First off, understand that the only way to learn about antiques and what they're worth is with hands-on experience.

Go to as many auctions, antiques shops, antiques fairs, flea markets and car boot sales as you possibly can. Handle the objects on offer and take note of the prices being achieved and asked for. If the sale has a catalogue, mark prices against each lot. On a tour of retail outlets take a notebook and scribble down prices.

Play game with yourself: try to guess the price of an object and compare your opinion with either the printed estimates or the dealers' labels.

Ask questions. Dealers delight in talking to their customers and are generally only too happy to impart their knowledge. After all, that's probably how most of them learned their trade too.

When viewing an auction sale, you invariably find the auctioneer walking the floor. Ask him why two seemingly identical objects have such a wide variation in the prices he expects them to fetch.

He'll point out things that you that otherwise would be a mystery: hidden damage; poor restoration; marriages -- when tops and bottoms of a piece of furniture don't go together; subtle differences in designs and colourways and so on.

Talk to other collectors. They too are delighted to be given the chance to make a convert to their hobby. They are mines of information which make them extremely valuable people to know.

The more you see and the more people you meet, the more knowledgeable you will become.

Go to the library. Find the antiques reference section and read everything you can get your hands on.

There is currently a plethora of TV programmes. Watch them all and try to second-guess the experts. After a while, your valuations expertise will become something of a party piece.

By then you can start making and spending your hard-earned money!

Pictures show, top: Any advance on £45 million? Sotheby's chairman Henry Wyndham selling a previously completely unknown early work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Massacre of the Innocents, which sold for £49.5 million ($76.7 million) making it the most expensive Old Master painting ever sold

Below, left: Judith Miller's 2006 Collectables Price Guide

Right: Miller's Collectables Price Guide edited by Madeleine Marsh

$7.5 million for Princess Gloria's contemporary art at Phillips

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Heard the one about the auctioneer and the Punk Princess? Read Artnet's report of Phillips' sale of contemporary art owned by this German aristocrat who married in to the wealth of the Thurn und Taxis family of Germany. Auctioneer Simon de Pury had such fun, he paused the proceedings to tell the audience a joke. Read it here and decided for yourself whether it was funny.

Trafalgar gold medal sells for record £248,800

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What's more valuable - a medal awarded to Admiral Lord Nelson, or one awarded to the captain he urged to kiss him as he lay dying from a sniper's bullet. Read the Bloomberg.com account of the Christie's sale here.

Battle of the Canalettos and the winner costs £18.6m

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Record-breaking Canaletto

The champagne corks popped at Christie's when their Canaletto sold for a record-breaking £11.4 million but the celebrations moved to Bond Street when Sotheby's Canaletto smashed that price and was knocked down for a cool £18.6 million. Nice work if you can get it, but as supply of such top end paintings dries up, the problem now is finding another blockbuster. Read the BBC online report of the sales here.

£32,400 for the £2 teapot - just right for the cup that cheers

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£2 teapot

More fun than winning the Lotto. Imagine the joy of finding a Minton teapot like the one illustrated and learning it was worth all the tea in China. It sold for £32,400. Read the story here and tell us your best car boot sale buy in the You WriteAntiques forum.

Outrcy over Hitler sketches auction

When will auctioneers realise that anything connected to Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust will cause an outcry if they try to offer it for sale? Or are they such desperate money-grubbers that they don't care? Read about the latest case here: Adolf's sketches on the block.

McCartney concert tickets in Music Clearing Minefields auction

Fresh from his headlining Live 8 Hyde Park appearance, Paul McCartney is top billing in another gig - a charity auction to raise money to rid that other scourge of Third World countries: anti-personnel mines. Read about it here and get bidding.

Bikers’ bible gets in on the bidding act

Bikers' bible Motorcycle News has announced it has launched an internet site so that like-minded buyers and sellers of anything connected with motorcycles can bid for and buy or sell objects from the comfort of their homes. Click here here to read more.

Starwars sale: batteries not included

Budding Luke Skywalkers and Darth Vaders will no doubt do battle to own an authentic light sabre when bidding opens in this auction in Beverly Hills on June 29. Click here to learn where to place your bid but caveat emptor - batteries are not included!

Many a slip twixt antique cup and lip

Imagine hearing that the antique silver cup you sold in a provincial auction for £4,000 had just sold in a London auction for £456,000. That's what happened to one unlucky punter this week, but what would you do? Sob or sue?
Click here to read all about how an exceptionally rare early 17th century globe cup made by Dutch silversmith Pybe Wouters turned to gold.