Charles II ‘wanted poster’ sold for £33,000 to resident of Boscobel, UK
The 'wanted poster' sold to a resident of the town where the future Charles II took refuge in a tree
Britain's royal family is at a high point of its historical popularity. It is of course Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee year, and her two grandsons Prince William and Harry (not to mention Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton) are rarely out of the papers with generally very favourable coverage.
But things were not always this way, and an item has just sold reminding us of a historical low - a point at which if things had taken a slightly different turn today's situation would look very different.
A Shropshire auctioneer offered a wanted poster - a proclamation, no less - for the capture of a man who would be king.
In January 30, 1649, Charles I of England was executed by order of Parliament. His son Charles set about trying to raise an army, but in 1651 was defeated at the battle of Worcester and at one point had to hide in an oak tree in Boscobel, Shropshire.
It was from this time that the document offered was issued: a Parliamentary proclamation offering a reward of £1,000 for the capture of "the discovery and apprehending of Charles Stuart and other traitors, his adherents and abettors".
Charles II (Stuart) wanted poster/proclamation
The sum of £1,000 would be worth roughly £75,000 today - a tempting sum for many if they had happened to spot the prince in his arboreal bungalow.
As it was, he survived and a decade later was crowned Charles II - though he dated the start of his reign to the time of his father's death.
The auctioneer had offered the document with a listed price of just £750-1,000, but furious bidding forced it all the way to final staggering price of £33,000. The new owner is believed to be from Boscobel, which probably isn't a coincidence.
Collectors on the look-out for Royal historical documents should take a lot at our collectibles for sale pages. One which certainly marks a turning point in history is Henry VIII's personal divorce plea.
Source:Paul Fraser Collectables
Deep sea grave of the Titanic…
Extraordinary sonar images show full map of shipwreck strewn across the ocean floor for first time
It is one of the most famous disasters the world has ever known and even inspired an Oscar-winning film.
But never before has the Titanic disaster been seen in such extraordinary detail as these new images show.
Researchers have pieced together what is believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field.
They hope it will provide new clues about what exactly happened on that fateful night 100 years ago when the superliner hit an iceberg and plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic, killing more than 1,500 people.
An expedition team used sonar imaging and more than 100,000 photos taken from underwater robots to create the map, which shows where hundreds of objects and pieces of the presumed-unsinkable vessel landed.
Marks on the muddy ocean bottom suggest that the stern rotated like a helicopter blade as the ship sank, rather than plunging straight down.
Explorers of the Titanic - which sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City - have known for more than 25 years where the bow and stern landed after the vessel struck an iceberg.
But previous maps of the floor around the wreckage were incomplete, said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic historian who consulted on the 2010 expedition. Studying the site with old maps was like trying to navigate a dark room with a weak flashlight.
'With the sonar map, it's like suddenly the entire room lit up and you can go from room to room with a magnifying glass and document it,' he said. 'Nothing like this has ever been done for the Titanic site.'
The mapping took place in the summer of 2010 during an expedition to the Titanic led by RMS Titanic Inc., the legal custodian of the wreck, along with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and the Waitt Institute of La Jolla, California.
They were joined by the cable History channel and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Park Service is also involved in the mapping.
Details on the new findings at the bottom of the ocean are not being revealed yet, but the network will air them in a two-hour documentary on April 15, exactly 100 years after the Titanic sank.
The expedition team ran two independently self-controlled robots known as autonomous underwater vehicles along the ocean bottom day and night.
The torpedo-shaped AUVs surveyed the site with side-scan sonar, moving at a little more than three miles per hour as they traversed back and forth in a grid along the bottom.
The AUVs also took high-resolution photos - 130,000 of them in all - of a smaller 2-by-3-mile area where most of the debris was concentrated.
The photos were stitched together on a computer to provide a detailed photo mosaic of the debris.
The result is a map that looks something like the moon's surface showing debris scattered across the ocean floor well beyond the large bow and stern sections that rest about half a mile apart.
The map provides a forensic tool with which scientists can examine the wreck site much the way an airplane wreck would be investigated on land.
For instance, the evidence that the stern rotated is based on the marks on the ocean floor to its west and the fact that virtually all the debris is found to the east.
'When you look at the sonar map, you can see exactly what happened,' said Paul-Henry Nargeolet, the expedition's co-leader with RMS Titanic.
The first mapping of the Titanic wreck site began after it was discovered in 1985, using photos taken with cameras aboard a remotely controlled vehicle that didn't venture far from the bow and stern.
The mapping over the years has improved as explorers have built upon previous efforts in piecemeal fashion, said Charlie Pellegrino, a Titanic explorer who was not involved in the 2010 expedition.
But this is the first time a map of the entire debris field has looked at every square inch in an orderly approach, he said.
'This is quite a significant map,' he said. 'It's quite a significant advance in the technology and the way it's done.'
At Lone Wolf Documentary Group in South Portland, producers are putting the final touches on the History documentary. Rushmore DeNooyer, the co-producer and writer of the show, points out the different items on the map, displayed on a screen.
They include a huge tangle of the remains of a deckhouse; a large chunk of the side of the ship measuring more than 60 feet long and weighing more than 40 tons; pieces of the ship's bottom; and a hatch cover that blew off of the bow section as it crashed to the bottom.
Other items include five of the ship's huge boilers, a revolving door and even a lightning rod from a mast.
By examining the debris, investigators can now answer questions like how the ship broke apart, how it went down and whether there was a fatal flaw in the design, he said.
The layout of the wreck site and where the pieces landed provide new clues on exactly what happened. Computer simulations will re-enact the sinking in reverse, bringing the wreckage debris back to the surface and reassembled.
Some of those questions will be answered on the show, said Dirk Hoogstra, a senior vice president at History. He declined to say ahead of the show what new theories are being put forth on the sinking.
'We've got this vision of the entire wreck that no one has ever seen before,' he said. 'Because we have, we're going to be able to reconstruct exactly how the wreck happened. It's groundbreaking, jaw-dropping stuff.'
Source: Daily Mail
Van Gogh’s former London home goes on sale for £475,000 (…first time on the market in 65 years)
A house once lived in by artist Vincent Van Gogh is to go under the hammer for £475,000 - and comes complete with its very own outside toilet.
Described by estate agents as a property in need of 'modernisation', the three-storey property has no central heating but has an English Heritage blue plaque on the outside wall honouring the artist.
The painter lived at the home in 1873 after coming to London to work at an art dealers at the age of 20.
Van Gogh is said to have spend one of the ‘happiest years of his life’ lodging at the three-bedroom home in Hackford Road, Brixton.
The Dutch artist, who resided on the top floor of the three-storey house, even sketched the property, which was built in about 1850.
Seven of Van Gogh's paintings are in the ‘most expensive ever sold list’, which were purchased for a combined total of £425million.
Sellers Savills have put the house up for sale for the first time in 65 years - and boast that it offers an outside loo and real fireplaces, among other ‘period features’.
Russell Taylor, of Savills, said the auction is due to take place on March 27 after the owners decided to sell up after 65 years.
Seven of Van Gogh's paintings are in the 'most expensive ever sold list'
He added: 'It has probably only changed hands twice since Vincent lived there.
'It needs total modernisation but a lot of features such as the fireplaces where he would have warmed himself on a cold night were covered up so they are not damaged in any way.'
Letters sent to his brother Theo say he had fallen in love with the landlady’s daughter Eugenie Loyer, who did not return his love - the spark which some say started his descent into mental illness.
In one letter Van Gogh said that Eugenie was ‘quite beautiful and so quiet that you almost forget you are in London’.
Savills state: 'At the next Savills Auction, to be held on 27 March, 2012, the Savills team will be auctioning 87 Hackford Road, SW9, the former home of Vincent van Gogh from 1873 -1874.
'At the age of 20 Van Gogh arrived in London to start work at an art dealership in Southampton Street and from August of 1873 he lived at 87 Hackford Road.
'The house was owned by Mrs Loyer who lived there with her daughter, it was Mrs Loyer’s daughter who Van Gogh reputedly first fell in love with.
'There is also a sketch of Hackford Road which includes number 87, this was in the possession of Eugenie Loyer’s grand daughter, Mrs Kathleen Maynard, and is now in the Van Gogh museum, Amsterdam.
'The Hackford Road sketch is the earliest surviving drawing from Vincent’s English period.
'87 Hackford Road, SW9 is an end of terrace three bed period property with rear garden and is in need of full modernisation and is on at a guide of £475,000.'
Source: Daily Mail
Frozen in time: The watch that stopped when the Lusitania sank 97 years ago
A stopwatch belonging to one of the survivors from the Lusitania ocean liner that sunk in 1915, has been valued at £1,000 despite its inoperative state.
Frank Holman, a waiter on the liner, was wearing the timepiece when the ship was hit by a German torpedo.
The watch stopped as soon as Holman was flung into the Atlantic Ocean, where he was forced to tread water for five hours before he was eventually rescued.
His daughter Barbara Wiffen who has held the stopwatch since her father's passing told the BBC: 'My late father, Frank Holman, was on the Lusitania at the time she was torpedoed.
'The torpedo struck I understand at twelve minutes past two and his watch stopped at two twenty eight when he hit the water.
'He didn't speak about it very much because he found it very traumatic, but he was in the water for five hours before he was picked up.
'At one stage he found a young boy who was obviously in difficulties and my father swam for some time with with his hands clasped round his neck but as time went on it became obvious to him that the lad had unfortunately passed away.
'So regrettably he had to release him, and I think that stayed with him for the rest of his life. When I was a child, I use to hear him shouting in his sleep.'
Antiques Roadshow expert Hilary Kay insisted that the watch would generate much interest despite the relic not functioning.
She told the show: 'Lusitania artifacts have appeared on the market in the past, and they always create a stir, particularly in The States, of course. I would see this certainly fetching £1,000 at auction, if not more.
'Over a thousand people were drowned, of which over a hundred were American civilians, and it was what catapulted America eventually into the First World War.
'So it is an incredibly important piece of 20th century history. And we have a piece of memorabilia here which I find incredibly resonant.'
Despite the estimation, Holman's daughter has insisted that she would never part with the watch given its sentimental value.
The ship, bound for Liverpool from New York sunk in approximately 18 minutes, claiming the lives of 1,959 passengers in the process.
Fans rush to track down the original Monkeemobile in the wake of Davy Jones’ death…
...but the $500,000 car is not for sale
Since the sad passing of Davy Jones at just 66 years of age, fans of the Monkees have been clamouring for information about one last, glorious link to the beloved Mancunian star.
They all want to know where the Monkeemobile got to, and if they can afford to buy it.
The answers to those both those questions are Michigan and er, no.
The Monkeemobile, for the uninitiated, is the modified Pontiac GTO made famous on the 1960s Monkees TV show.
And TMZ have tracked the iconic motor down.
They started with famed car customiser George Barris - who built the car for the show - who told the website that he's been getting bombarded with calls since Davy's death.
Fans want to know: “Where is the car? Is it still available? Can we see it? Can we take a photo with it?'
But George sold it at auction back in 2008 for approximately $500,000 to Mel Gutherie from Michigan.
And while he's happy for fans to take pictures with the car, as he he doesn't feel comfortable driving it they will have to travel to America's Midwest.
In 2010, Davy Jones himself signed it and Mr Gutherie last met Jones on February 11, when they took a picture together, and he said he 'seemed perfectly fine, in great health, just as chipper as ever.'
He added that he was 'shocked' by the death.
'He was a real gentleman,' he said sadly.
Gutherie keeps the car so safe, as have the previous owners, that in approximately 40 years, the car has only run up 8,000 miles.
New York, New York: Nostalgic wartime images romanticize the Big Apple in black and white
From buskers in Times Square and 40ft tall billboards lighting up the theatre district, to the boardwalk in Coney Island, New York is known for its many landmarks.
But these nostalgic photographs are a distinctly different vision from the Big Apple we know today.
Antique cars and vintage wardrobe tell the story of old New York in these black and white photos taken by LIFE's photographers between 1942 and 1970.
Farewell: A couple in Penn Station share a kiss before he ships off to WWII in December, 1943
The LIFE archive includes a small selection of the magazine's black-and-white photos that 'show off the the spirit, the architecture, the culture (high and decidedly low) of Gotham', according to its editors.
Hovering over Times Square, Marlene Dietrich is splayed on a Times Square billboard attracting crowds below in 1944.
A ghostly photo of New York Harbor shows the skyline much as we know it today with a view straight down bustling 42nd Street in 1946; and people race from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during an air raid drill in November 1951.
In 1944, a strolling blind musician is shown playing guitar and harmonica along Broadway.
Glamour: New Yorkers crowd Broadway below a large billboard depicting actress Marlene Dietrich reclining in an Arabian harem costume over the Astor movie theater marquee in October, 1944
Landmark: Russian head Nikita S Khrushchev and his wife, center, meet the press at the top of the Empire State building in September, 1959
Bustling: Men vanishing from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during an air raid drill in November, 1951
Ruckus: Young boys with sticks, running around while playing a street game in Spanish Harlem in January, 1947
Summer in the city: Aerial view of the crowded beach and pier at Coney Island, including the Parachute Jump amusement park ride, in 1951
Style is telling of the time period in many of the photographs, such as the well-heeled woman walking her poodles along Fifth Avenue in October 1942.
A view from the balcony at the opening of new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in January 1966 shows theatregoers in black tie, ready for a show.
Further uptown, in Spanish Harlem, young boys are pictured playing a street game with sticks.
Chic: A woman walks her poodles along Fifth Avenue in October, 1942
Amid all of the chaos, a couple pauses to share a kiss in bustling Penn Station in 1942, before he ships out to war.
But the city crowds are as dense as ever, despite the decades passed.
Another photo of a Manhattan subway train in 1970 show commuters crammed in and holding on for dear life - all for the love of living in the Big Apple.
Source: Daily Mail
Jumbo joy! He’s auctioned a Ferrari for £14m, but nothing’s given Antiques Road Trip’s Charlie Ross more pleasure than selling a china elephant
Some 40 years ago, a little blonde girl stood wide-eyed outside her home on a South African game reserve as a group of elephants grazed on the orange trees in front of her.
As Myrna Schkolne watched in wonderment, a male elephant gorged himself on orange after orange, clearly loving squeezing the sweet juice into his mouth.
Myrna, now a US-based antiques expert and author, has never forgotten the moment, and her love of elephants is still as strong.
Charlie Ross with the record-breaking elephant originally bought for just £8
Fast forward to 2011, and an auction house in Scotland, where Antiques Road Trip presenter Charlie Ross was about to make the biggest sale of the series. And the most extraordinary discovery of his TV career was about to mark the end of Myrna’s 25-year quest for her elephant.
This remarkable story began – as Charlie explains – with sheer luck. Faced with the challenge of bagging bargains from antiques shops and selling them on for a profit at auction for the show, he found himself outside an emporium with fellow expert and competitor James Braxton.
Auctioneer Charlie, 61, recalls, ‘The antiques were stored in a converted chapel and an outhouse. James and I tossed a coin to see who should go where, and he got the chapel while I headed for the outhouse.’
It was there that something caught Charlie’s eye – a Staffordshire elephant, some 9in tall. Charlie says, ‘I knew as soon as I saw him he was something special. I picked him up and looked at the wonderful detail. The price tag was just £12, although I knew this elephant was worth hundreds of pounds. But I wasn’t thinking about the profit I would make; all I could look at was the tiny figure sitting on top of the elephant. He was so charming – he seemed to be calling out to me.’
Charlie still couldn’t resist haggling. ‘The owner of the shop told me he’d found the elephant in a house clearance, sitting at the back of a cupboard. I don’t know who had owned him, but he’d obviously been loved and cared for. At £12, it was a bargain, but I still had to haggle – and I bought him for just £8.’
Next stop was the local auction house, where Charlie’s bargains went under the hammer. ‘I was hoping to raise as much as £500,’ says Charlie. ‘But the auctioneer had put an image of the elephant on the website and suddenly there was an extraordinary explosion of worldwide interest’ – including from Myrna in North Carolina.
‘I saw this elephant on the website, and it was love at first sight,’ she says. Even as an avid collector of Staffordshire pieces, Myrna, 48, had only ever seen two such figures on offer. ‘One had come up for sale but he was albino [the elephants are normally grey], which didn’t do it for me. Another came up at auction a few years ago but had been heavily restored. Then I saw this one and knew we were meant for each other.
‘I placed an email bid, but didn’t want to risk losing it, so, because of the time difference, I got up at 5am to bid over the phone. The bidding took ages, but when it ended he was mine – and the room, to my surprise, broke into applause. “That’s for you,” said the nice lady on the phone, who told me the auction had been filmed for a TV programme.
‘My elephant had cost Charlie £8 and me an awful lot more [£2,700]. But it’s possible to have two winners, and both he and I were happy.’
Charlie adds, ‘The auction was the most exciting I’ve experienced. Last year I auctioned a Ferrari for £14 million, but the excitement created by this sweet little elephant beat that. There was a huge buzz in the auction room, and when the hammer went down, there was whooping and hollering – not least from me.
‘The £2,700 paid is an Antiques Road Trip record. Of course, what I didn’t realise until later was the buyer had spent 25 years searching for this item. It wasn’t about me winning the competition, it was about somebody with a real love finding the object she had spent so long looking for.’
Family’s shock as they discover great uncle’s comic collection is worth $2m
A 'jaw-dropping' collection of some of the most sought after comics in the world are set to fetch more than $2million at auction today.
And while the brothers set to benefit from the eye-watering sale thought they were 'cool' - they suspected they were worthless.
Michael Rorrer of California and his brother Jonathan were fleetingly told as youngsters that they might one day inherit their great uncle's collection of comics.
Jaw-dropping': Michael Rorrer thought the collection of 345 comics he inherited were 'cool' but had no idea his Action Comics No.1 and Detective Comics No.27 would be valued at $325,000 and $475,000 respectively
And when they were handed down to him last year, Michael admits he had no idea the collection contained some of the most prized issues ever published.
Speaking about the impressive hoard Lon Allen, the managing director of comics for Heritage Auctions, the Dallas-based auction house overseeing the sale said: 'This is just one of those collections that all the guys in the business think don't exist anymore.
'It was kind of hard to wrap my head around it, It's absolutely jaw-dropping.
It wasn't until a few months after he received the collection that 31-year-old Michael began to realise how rare they were - after a run of the mill conversation with a colleague at work.
He explained to him how he had read a 1941 issue of Captain America No.2, in which the hero bursts in on Adolf Hitler, hidden away in the stack of 345 books neatly piled up in his great uncle's basement.
His co-worker joked that it was almost as good as finding Action Comics No.1, widely considered to be the most important comic, in which Superman makes his first appearance.
'I went home and was looking through some of them and there it was' said Rorrer, who then began researching the collection's value.
'I couldn't believe what I had sitting there upstairs at the house.'
That issue alone is expected to sell for about $325,000 when the collection goes under the hammer at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion auction house in New York today, while the Captain America book he enjoyed flicking through is set to fetch $100,000.
Despite these staggering fees a Detectives Comics No. 27, from 1939, in which Batman makes his first unofficial appearance, could bring in the biggest fee having been valued at $475,000.
In all the collection contains 44 of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide's list of top 100 and four of the top five - a figure that associate publisher of the guide called 'dizzying'.
Paul Litch, the primary grader at Certified Guaranty Company, an independent certification service for comic books added: 'There were some really hard to find books that were in really, really great condition.
'You can see it was a real collection, someone really cared about these and kept them in good shape.'
Sketched self-portrait of David Hockney as a teenager sells at auction for £22,500
At first glance, it looks like just another childhood drawing.
But look carefully at this young boy and you may recognise a famous face – David Hockney, now known as Britain’s greatest living artist.
The self-portrait, which was sketched more than 50 years ago when the painter was just 17 years old, has just sold at Christie’s for more than £20,000.
David Hockney self-portrait: Experts say the drawing, which sold for £22,500, demonstrates the artist's talent even as a teenager
Fish and Chip Shop: This lithograph sold for £20,000
The image was printed on a piece of cartridge paper less than 30cm wide and was produced by the young Hockney in 1954 as a school assignment.
But despite its humble appearance, experts say it is one of the rarest and earliest examples of his work and shows the distinctive talent Hockney possessed even as a teenager.
- Ssss-ensational: This black-and-red 1964 piece called Jungle Boy fetched £8,750
It was with his encouragement that the youngster applied for the Royal College of Art, where he launched his career as a painter.
The striking black, white and yellow portrait shows the teenager sporting a blunt fringe and prescription glasses – a look he had adopted from his hero, the artist Stanley Spencer.
He signed it ‘David H’ and inscribed ‘For Mr Maddox’ in ink – thought to be Reggie Maddox, Hockney’s art teacher at Bradford Grammar School.
The piece was sold today for £22,500 - its sale estimate was between £15,000 and £20,000.
The extraordinary amount was put down by an anonymous telephone buyer after a fierce bidding war lasting several minutes.
It comes as fans across the country clamour to snap up the last tickets for the artist’s most extensive British exhibition ever at the Royal Academy.
Tickets for the show, which ends on April 9, are now going for £75 on internet touting sites after the first batch of advance tickets sold out before it even opened.
A Christie’s spokesman said: ‘David Hockney’s self-portrait was the first lot of the sale, and as the catalogue cover image it received a lot of exposure prior to auction.
‘As one of Hockney’s first lithograhphs it shows his early interest in the use of colour, and it is an incredibly important image in his oeuvre.’
It formed part of the Hockney On Paper sale at the auction house in South Kensington, London.
It featured 147 works including etchings, lithographs, drawings and photography by David Hockney and was expected to realise in excess of £1 million.
The sale spanned over 40 years of the artist’s career and included works which reflected the different stages of his life.
It also included another lithograph created when he was 17, depicting a fish and chips shop in the artist’s home town of Bradford.
The piece sold for £20,000 – more than double its estimate of between £7,000 and £9,000.
Hockney, who was born in 1937, grew up in Bradford before attending Bradford College of Art and then the Royal College of Art.
In the 1960s, he moved to California where he became a leading figure in the Pop Art movement and created his pool paintings – now regarded as his most iconic works.
He painted landscapes all over the world before returning to paint his native Yorkshire in the late 1990s.
His show at the Royal Academy, David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, is regarded as the most extensive exhibition of his works to appear in Britain.
Tickets are still available on the door each day and more advance tickets have been released since they sold out.
However, unofficial internet touting sites such as thecityticketbrokers.com are selling advance tickets for £75 – five times the original price.
Superheros swing into Peter Francis Auctioneers salerooms
Superheros swing into Peter Francis Auctioneers salerooms in Carmarthen for their Antiques and Fine Art sale on March 27th. Although not always associated with Fine Art, comic books are a very collectable commodity and fully deserve the growing recognition they are being given.
Superhero and condition. A local consignment includes The Amazing Spider-Man Issue 1 from March 1963. Scripted by Stan Lee and brought to life by Steve Ditko this first issue which also features the Fantastic Four should greatly appeal to the collectors. Other Superheroes that will feature inclute Batman, Superman and the Green Lantern.
Fine consignments of silver, Welsh pottery and porcelain, an unusual Indian handpainted wall plate and Scott of the Antarctic memorabilia will all feature in what is shaping up to be a very strong sale across the board.
With over 17000 lots sold last year and four strong sales under our belt already in 2012 competition and prices are buoyant.
The auction will be open for live bidding for more details please check our website www.peterfrancis.co.uk or call on 01267233456.