Maharaja’s ‘tiger-car’ Rolls-Royce at US auction
London: A 1925 Rolls-Royce car customised with mounted guns and searchlights and used by an Indian maharaja to hunt tigers will be put up for auction in the United States next month, Bonhams auction house said.
The New Phantom was commissioned by Sahib Bahadur, officially known as Umed Singh II, the maharaja of Kota, from the British motor manufacturers.
"The car will now be available at auction for the first time and carries an estimate of $750,000-$1,000,000," London-based Bonhams said in a statement.
It will be sold during the Quail Lodge sale on August 18 and 19 in Carmel, California, during Pebble Beach Car Week.
The car is powered by an 8.0-litre, six-cylinder engine with dual-spark ignition that is set to a low gearing ratio, so the massive car was able to creep through the jungles of Rajasthan.
It has all the standard luxury fittings expected of a Rolls-Royce, but also contains a hidden safe, a nickel-plated hissing snake horn, and a whole host of weapons for the hunt.
There is a mounted "Howdah" gun -- a double-barrel shotgun in pistol form -- a rifle stand in the passenger seat at the back, a mountable Lantaka cannon attached to the bumper, and a machine gun mounted on a matching trailer.
The vehicle also came with two powerful searchlights to enable the maharaja to carry out his hunting at night.
Source: NDTV Website
Most expensive white wine ever at UK Auction
A bottle of Château d’Yquem has become the most expensive white wine ever bought.
The bottle of 1811 Yquem was sold by the Antique Wine Company at a private sale at the Ritz in London for £75,000.
The buyer was French collector Christian Vanneque, former head sommelier of the Michelin-starred restaurant La Tour d’Argent in Paris.
He is now the owner of the SIP Sunset Grill in Bali, Indonesia, which opens this September.
The bottle will go on display there in a bullet-proof, temperature and hydrometrically controlled case.
However, it will only remain there for six years before Vanneque drinks it with his family to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his starting work in Paris. He has apparently already decided on a menu to go with it.
Vanneque called his purchase his little “folie” but insisted that it really was for drinking and would never be for sale again, “even if a wealthy Chinese gentleman or a rich man from the Middle East offers to buy it,” he said afterwards.
The 1811 vintage is hailed as one of Bordeaux’s greatest by those lucky enough to have tasted it, and wine critic Robert Parker gave it 100 points in 1999 when he described it as “liquefied crème brûlée”.
The previous record for a white wine was also a bottle of Yquem from 1787, which was sold for £31,000 in 2006.
Vanneque was reported to have laughed nervously when someone asked him what he would do if the wine was corked.
But he took it in good spirit, saying: “If the wine has a flaw, then tough luck. You just have to smell it and enjoy the sight of it.
“I hope not, my God. If it does, then I would call Guinness because it would be another record – the most expensive bottle of ruined wine in the world.”
Source: The Drink Business Website
Her Royal Chubbiness: Rejected life-size porcelain doll of the Queen as a toddler is now being sold at Uk Auction
When a world-famous manufacturer produced a porcelain doll of the infant Princess 
Elizabeth, it was quick to ask Buckingham Palace for an endorsement.
But courtiers refused point blank – because they said it was too chubby.
As a result, the German firm Schoenau and Hoffmeister made only a few copies of the future Queen, who was born in 1926, before production was abandoned.At least one, however, has survived and has now been placed on public display before being auctioned next year. Cambridge antiques dealer Christopher Raimer, who bought it in the early 1970s, is exhibiting the doll at the Antiques for Everyone sale at the NEC in Birmingham.
He said: ‘I have never seen another one of these before – and there are no records of one ever appearing at auction in the past.
‘I bought it from a lady who had owned it from the late 1920s, when it was made. She lived in Windsor but I don’t think there was any connection there.’
Mr Raimer, 65, said the original owner had explained that the Royal Family did not feel the doll was pretty enough. The main problem was her baby fat, particularly her chubby arms.
He added: ‘I used to travel all over the world buying and selling dolls but due to how rare this is it is hard to predict what it will sell for.
‘But it is in excellent condition. The body is still perfect and the leather shoes are as good as new. I expect it would go for at least £1,500 in the current doll market – which is a fantastic price – but because it is the Diamond Jubilee next year it could go for a lot more.’
Source: Daily Mail Website
Letters and sketch books written by Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele auctioned off at $245,000.
Letters, short stories and poetry of Josef Mengele - the 'Angel of Death' of Auschwitz - are to be auctioned off in America this week for tens of thousands of pounds.
Included in the cache of 3,300 pages of handwritten notes is an autobiography detailing his flight from Germany at the end of the war to South America where he lived as the world's most wanted man.
This man - who collected the eyeballs of twins and killed countless people in hideous experiments at the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in his quest to clone the 'Aryan super race' - bound his musings in hardback covers and illustrated many of them with lavish drawings.
They were obtained by the Alexander Historic Auctions company of Stamford, Connecticut, and were sold Thursday, July 21.
Mengele joined Heinrich Himmler's S.S. in 1938 and after serving on the eastern Front, was transferred to Auschwitz in 1943. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the physicians who supervised the ‘selection’ of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who would be gassed and who would live to be worked to death.
However, he became far more infamous for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, including children and twins, for which he earned his terrible nickname. In Auschwitz he epitomised the institutionalised cruelty of the Nazi state.
In most of the journals he writes in the third person or uses the pseudonym ‘Andreas’, Mengele describes his capture by American forces, hiding on a farm while furtively meeting his wife, his escape over the Brenner Pass to Italy, his arrest, passage to Argentina, and life in Paraguay and Brazil.
His extreme racial views are never far away. One passage reads; ‘Black people remind us of night time and the dangers of the night...like the raven...the dark soul.’
‘He also offers his opinions on a myriad of subjects, including race-mixing, the Nuremburg war crimes trials, justification of the concentration camp system, and denial of the conditions at the camps.
Diaries covering three years are present, as are a grouping of short stories, travelogues, and romantic poetry written by the ex-murderer,’ said a spokesman for Alexander Historic Auctions.
The journals include some poems written by Mengele as well as commentaries on various subjects. In one, according to the auction house, he indicated that sexual promiscuity has led ‘to a dreadful mixing of the races with the northern Europeans ... when you start mixing the races, there is a decline in civilization.’
His diary sold last year for 40,000 pounds, auctioned by the same company and bought by the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. These other papers are expected to fetch as least as much and possibly more.
The auction house spokesman added; ‘Taken as a whole and carefully read and analyzed, this archive offers an in-depth view into the cruelest mind of the twentieth century. Unlike a grouping of static wartime documents or reports, these are intensely personal writings of a desperate man, not penned over a single evening but over fifteen years as he fled his pursuers. They illustrate a remorseless, angry, vain, pseudo-intellectual murderer seeking to leave his mark on the world.’
Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Historic Auctions, added; ‘Scholarly institutions or historic collections should obtain these writings not as a 'remembrance' of a horrific period of world history, but more as a learning tool for future generations to recognize the psychopathic mentality that incited the Holocaust so that similar genocides are never repeated.’
The journals are understood to have been donated by a Mengele family member in Germany but the auction house does not reveal their exact provenance.
Mengele had a doctorate in medicine from Frankfurt University, but used his knowledge in a sickening manner at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed experiments as an SS physician from 1943 to 1945.
Although prisoners transferred to his wing to be studied escaped the gas chambers and were well fed, they often ultimately met an even more painful death.
Mengele regularly performed surgery without anaesthetic and would obtain bodies to work on simply by injecting chloroform into inmates’ hearts while they slept, which would kill them in seconds.
He was most interested in heredity and once tried to change the colour of children’s eyes by injecting chemicals directly into them.
Twins held a particular fascination for him and it's estimated that he examined around 3,000 - but only 100 pairs survived.
Pregnant women were also singled out. He was known to have performed vivisections on them before consigning them to the death chambers.
The so-called Angel of Death was on the Allied commanders’ most-wanted list from 1944, but he escaped to South America and was never found, despite the best efforts of private investigators and the Israeli secret service, Mossad.
Source: Daily Mail Website
Unseen Beatles Snaps Fetch £224,000 At Auction
Pictures snapped by an 18-year-old photographer at The Beatles' first US concert have sold in the saleroom for £225,000.
The 50 silver gelatin prints all sold individually and had been estimated to make $100,000 (£62,000).
Photographer Mike Mitchell took the snaps at the Washington Coliseum on February 11, 1964, two days after their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on television.
Among the highlights is a backlit shot of the band that he took while standing directly behind them.
It sold for $68,500 (£42,500), although it was expected to fetch less than $3,000 (£1,800).
Cathy Elkies, Christie's director of iconic collections, said she expected the bids to exceed the pre-sale estimates.
"Beatles fans are fierce. To uncover this trove of images that's never been published will really excite people," she said.
In a recent interview, Mitchell described the rollicking scene at the Washington indoor arena not only of screaming fans but also of his unrestricted access.
"It was a long time ago. Things were that way then," said the 65-year-old, who now works as an art photographer in Washington.
"It was as low-tech as the concert itself. The concert was in a sports venue and the sound system was the sound system of a sports venue."
Mitchell stored the negatives for years in a box in his basement.
He used digital technology to scan and restore the prints for the auction.
Souce
Almost Jailhouse Rock: Unseen 1950s police footage of Elvis performing ‘lewd movements’ on stage set to fetch £10,000 at Uk Auction
An Elvis Presley fanatic is set to cash in on his obsession with The King of Rock after placing never-before seen footage of 'The King' up for sale to the tune of £10,000!
Bill Ellis, 67, from Rhyl, North Wales paid the modest sum of £2.50 in today's monetary terms for the showreel, purchasing the unique souvenir alongside some of his favourite Elvis records in 1961.
And now the rare footage thought to date back to the 1950s is expected to fetch the handsome four-figure sum at an auction next month.
The footage is believed to have been captured by the Chicago police department who were investigating complaints about Elvis' lewd movements on stage.
Bill who has admitted he's open to offers, revealed he was amazed to see the global icon wearing his famous gold lame suit when he watched the film.
And having subsequently watched the footage, the self-confessed fanatic was able to date it between 1957 and 1958 - with the jacket later becoming one of Elvis' trademarks.
Ahead of the auction, Ellis expects fans and collectors of rock memorabilia to pay a vast sum for the reel.
'The film shows Elvis from the waist up and it looks like he's singing Baby, Let's Play House.
'It is silent and was obviously taken by an amateur some distance from the stage.
'One theory is that it was made by Chicago police at a time when the
authorities were checking on Elvis' supposedly lewd performances.'
Back in 1997, auctioneers put the item up for sale with a reserve price of £15,000.
It was listed among 331 items of Elvis memorabilia to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.
However, but despite a live satellite link-up with the Hard Rock Cafe in Berlin, the bidding fell short of that figure but is now expected to fetch the handsome sum when it returns to auction.
Source: Daily Mail Website
Model Train Collection Expected To Fetch £6,000 At UK Auction
Model Train Collection Expected To Fetch £6,000 At Halls’ Auction
A large collection of modern model trains, which were collected by two late brothers and their uncle, is to go under the hammer in a saleroom in Shropshire’s leading fine art auction house next month.
The collection, which is valued at around £6,000 and comes from a vendor in the Wrexham area, has been consigned to Halls’ auction of toys and collectibles at the Welsh Bridge saleroom in Shrewsbury on August 3.
Models by Hornby Dublo, Bachmann and Danish manufacturer Heljan are included in the collection.
“This collection is being sold by the widow of a collector who also inherited model trains from his uncle and brother,” said Stewart Orr, Halls’ toys specialist. “Also included is an interesting and extremely large gauge three locomotive.”
The gauge three live steam model of a 2-6-2 locomotive, pictured, which has a matching tender with the crest and motto ‘Quocunque Jeceris Stabit’, is valued at up to £400.
The auction also includes a small collection of nine stationary engine models built from scratch by a late Rolls Royce engineer in his retirement. “The workmanship on these models, which are valued at between £100 and £300 each, is of the highest quality,” said Mr Orr.
Six packs of Matchbox Toys, which have never been opened, are expected to fetch between £70 and £180 each. The packs, each containing six toys, were purchased by a North Wales vendor in 1971 from a West Midlands toys wholesaler for just 80p each.
At Halls’ toys auction in May, 18 of the packs sold for more than £2,000.
“These toys are in their original factory shrink wrap packaging,” explained Mr Orr. “Collectors must take potluck because the value of Matchbox Toys can be dependent on their colour and we had no idea what colour these toys are.
“Matchbox made large numbers of each model and sometimes ran out of a particular paint during production. Rather than waste production time, they would complete the run using trial or end of run colours.
“Collectors are particularly keen to own toys painted in trial colours because so few were made. There is a chance that a collector could buy a collectable model in a rare colour.
“The vendor decided to buy what he could from the wholesaler and would probably have paid around 80p for each pack, which made them a very good investment 40 years ago.”
Source: Uk Auction News Website
Taiwanese calligrapher donates rare work to British Museum
Taiwanese calligrapher donates rare work to British Museum
London, July 20 (CNA) A piece of calligraphy in the rare bird-worm style of Chinese brush writing by a centenarian calligrapher from Taiwan has been presented by the artist to the British Museum in London.
The calligraphy, featuring the opening verse of the Chinese historical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdom," was donated on Wednesday by Chao Mu-ho, the only living calligrapher in the Chinese world versed in the antique bird-worm style of calligraphy.
Chao said at a donation ceremony that he felt honored to have his work included in the collection of one of the world's most renowned museums.
The master also said he is willing to donate additional relevant collector's items in his possession to the museum to facilitate the preservation of the unique Chinese writing form.
Oliver H. Urquhart Irvine, the museum's head of Asian and African Studies, who accepted Chao's donation on behalf of the museum, said that although the museum already has bird-worm calligraphy in its trove, Chao's work represents a "new and contemporary addition" to its collection.
Chang Siao-yue, Taiwan's representative to the United Kingdom, said the ceremony marked a historic moment, as the donation will enable more people, including future generations, to appreciate the delicate form of Chinese calligraphy.
Accompanied by his students, Chao arrived in London recently on his second visit to Britain. Despite his advanced years, he remains quite exuberant and looks far younger than his age.
Chao told CNA in an interview that he spent three hours in June creating the piece for the British Museum.
"I chose the opening verse of `Romance of the Three Kingdoms' because it is one of my favorite poems," Chao said, adding that he loves the laid-back attitude toward life portrayed in the lines.
The novel, written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century, is based on the events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history that started in 169 A.D. and ended in 280 A.D.
According to Chao, the bird-worm style dates back more than 3,000 years and has transformed and evolved 20 times. The form he uses developed during the A.D. 9-23 rule of Wang Mang, a period between the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty.
"It is also the last form of this special style of Chinese calligraphy," Chao said, adding that he is sure nobody else today can write in this ancient style.
Chao said he is more than willing to pass on this cultural heritage to the younger generation and that in Taiwan, he has some students.
"I teach them for free. All of my students will have to practice for at least 10 more years to reach my level of mastery," he said, adding that British citizens are also welcome to study with him.
Born in China, Chao graduated from Shandong Normal University. He was forced to move around to avoid the many wars raging throughout China at the time. He made his way to Taiwan at the age of 40 and taught until he retired at 65.
Chao never stopped learning after his retirement, earning a second university degree at an astonishing 91 and a master's degree at 98.
Source: focus taiwan Website
Boer War camp bed set up for auction
A rare fold up camp bed which was used in South Africa during the Boer War has been uncovered in a house in Derby.
Charles Hanson, manager fo Hansons Auctioneers and as seen on BBC1 Bargain Hunt reported, 'we can only imagine the scenes the camp bed witnessed during the hot evenings and dark nights of the Boer War in South Africa.
The Boer War camp bed was used by Frederick Charles Simpson of Derby who later became Colour Sergeant in the Great War (1914-18).
Born in 1887. Frederick Charles Simpson was in the Sherwood Foresters.
The camp bed really is quite remarkable commented Mr Hanson. At the time of the Boer War (1899-1902) the Boers fought under Paul Kruger. British Garrisons in the towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking 
and Kimberley were besieged. The British suffered three bloody defeats in one week from 10-15 December 1899. With the arrival of Lord Roberts to South Africa in February 1900, the situation improved for the British and the Boers were finally defeated by May 1902. Over 22,000 British troops had been killed
The camp bed could certainly tell a story commented Mr Hanson and despite beng relatively comfortable I suspect private Frederick Charles Simpson slept in fear of what the following day may bring.
The archive discovered in a house in Derby also includes a photograph of a South African zulu father and his 'belle of the village' daughter together with an interesting collection of letters Private Simpson wrote back to his wife Amy.
Remarkably commented Mr Hanson is Private Simpson's shopping list of furnishings he ordered from The Midland Furnishings Stores at 31 and 33 Midland Road Derby which he purchased for the grand sum of £13 10s and 3d which he bought following his marriage in 1908. A sofa was purchased for £1 1s and a bedstead for £1 10s.
The camp bed which would have been set up under the great South African stars and on the vast rural plains is expected to sell for up to £200.
It is quite a talking point reported Charles Hanson and with such a provenance will appeal to worldwide collectors.
The archive and camp bed will be sold in Hansons auction on 17-18 August at The Mackworth Hotel.
Viewing for the auction will be on Tuesday 16 August 11am-7pm.
For further details telephone Hansons on 01283 733988 or view www.hansonsauctioneers.co.uk.
Clapton’s ‘famous’ Ferrari sold at UK Auction
A Ferrari previously owned by music legend Eric Clapton and radio presenter Chris Evans has fetched £66,500 at UK auction.
The rare 2003 Ferrari 575 Maranello, which has only covered 10,000 miles, was snapped up by a private buyer at a sale at Silverstone, Northamptonshire.
Described by Silverstone Auctions as a desirable car in its own right, the yellow Maranello was bought new by Clapton, who signed its service book, and was later sold to Evans.
Auction manager Guy Loveridge said the vehicle, which exceeded its guide price, was in lovely condition.
"It's a great car and we are not surprised that it fetched such a large amount of money," the auctioneer said. "Famous name provenance is always a help."
Source: Belfast Telegraph