The RMI’s Society of Motor Auctions (SMA) reports that members have seen a buoyant start to the year, but warns there is a polarisation in the market and the spectre of ageing unsold stock remains a critical factor. With greater defleet volumes expected through April and the post-Easter period, and no guarantee that retail demand [...]

THE first-ever online auction site just for the Harrogate area has been launched by the Harrogate Advertiser.
Lot 24-7 went live earlier this week at www.harrogatetoday.co.uk
It works like international website eBay – but has the advantage of only showing items for sale in this area.
Rowena Wallace, Group internet commercial manager is behind the launch.
She said: “It’s [...]

THREE pictures by the Leeds artist John Atkinson Grimshaw were on exhibition at Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, yesterday as part of a valuation day by the Christie’s auction house.
Grimshaw’s The Last Gleam (estimate £180,000 to £250,000), The Gossips, Bonchurch, the Isle of White ((£120,000 to £180,000) and In the Golden Gloaming (£120,000 to £180,000) are [...]

A view of Venice by Joseph Mallord William Turner is in the running to become the most expensive British painting ever sold at auction when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s in New York next week.
The auction house this week lifted its estimate on the painting to more than $20m (€16.6m, £11.5m) after a [...]

PHOTOGRAPHS sold at a Cumbrian auction for £75,000 last week after being valued at just £80 could be part of a missing John Ruskin collection and worth up to £500,000.
The losing bidder at the Penrith Farmers’ and Kidd’s auction Ian Sumner said he was convinced the images were either taken or bought by the Cumbrian [...]

Irish Auction News
Sligo Fianna Fail Senator, Eamon Scanlon, has clashed with Senator Shane Ross over his claims that the auctioneering profession in Ireland consists of a bunch of cowboys and racketeers.
Senator Scanlon, himself an auctioneer, has rejected the claims made by Senator Ross in a speech to the Seanad.

Bidders in an internet auction are offering over 13,000 euros (9,000 pounds) for a wartime German encoding machine, similar to ones whose messages were cracked by British code breakers in World War Two.
The portable Enigma encryption machine made in 1941 has a keyboard and a series of rotors designed to scramble messages. It is [...]

One of the last portraits painted by Pablo Picasso is to go on display at Sotheby’s auction house in London.
Dora Maar With Cat, which depicts one of the Spanish artist’s many lovers, is expected to fetch $50m (£28.5m) when it goes on sale in New York on 3 May.
The 1941 artwork will become one of [...]

One of Wales’ most significant castles, which has seen better days, is to be auctioned with a price tag of £1.5m.
Grade I-listed Gwrych Castle, which was built on the outskirts of Abergele in 1819, will go under the hammer in June.
The derelict castle has been targeted by vandals over the years, and restoring it could [...]

A rare collection of books about birds, some dating back more than 100 years, has gone up for auction in Nottingham.
Some of the volumes, the oldest of which was produced in 1850, contain prints of birds and their eggs.
The items form part of a legacy which was left to the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.
The books, which [...]

A rare book of Shakespeare’s plays, considered to be one of the most important in British literature, is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London.
The complete first folio of the playwright’s work had a print run of approximately 750 in 1623.
However, only a third of these survive and most of them are incomplete.
The book is [...]

Two MPs have tabled a Commons motion demanding that internet auction sites ban the sale of Blue Peter badges.
Liberal Democrats John Barrett and Andrew George have condemned what they say is an “unscrupulous” practice.
They say the badges “should be earned, not bought or sold”, and selling them will “devalue their status”.
The BBC has suspended free [...]

A HARBOROUGH auction house was the star of the small screen when programme-makers for television show Flog It visited.
A TV crew recorded an auction at Gildings in Roman Way on Tuesday as part of the BBC2 show, to be aired in about six months’ time. The auction drew a crowd of about 300.
In the show, [...]

US Auction News
A bottle of the world’s oldest whisky, Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1937, will be auctioned off on April 4 in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal. The auction is part of New York’s Tartan Week celebration. A single cask of whisky produced 61 bottles of the whisky and due to import laws, this bottle [...]

Irish Auction News
A RARE first edition of James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses is set to make thousands of pounds after being discovered in a cardboard box full of bric-a-brac at a house in Wiltshire.
The Dublin-born writer’s classic masterpiece turned up at a home in the cathedral city of Salisbury while the owners were having a [...]