Collectibles
Whether it's a doll that brings back treasured childhood memories or a classic car bought as an investment and stored under a sheet in a warehouse, collectibles come in all shapes and sizes. What's valuable to one person is garbage to another, with tastes, and investment returns, changing with the generations. What's something worth? Only what someone is willing to pay for it. On these pages we'll keep you informed about the latest trends and results in the collectible marketplace – cars, motorcycles, guitars, space artifacts, scientific instruments and more.
Three important scientific auctions this week: a 13-m (43-ft) Diplodocus skeleton (US$1.5 to $1.8 million), a first edition Luca Pacioli’s "Summa de Arithmetica" ($1.0 to $1.5 million) and a presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species" ($200,000 to $300,000).
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On Sunday, July 20, 1969, the first thing ever written by a human while on a celestial body that wasn't our own planet Earth was jotted onto a page. That page was within a book known as "The Timeline Book" which is set to be auctioned at Christie's New York later this year. -
Christie's held two science-related auctions last week, and across the two, some quite remarkable scientific artifacts were on offer. Here's our pick of the offerings.
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A rare collection of props, costumes, and other materials from the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet will go on auction at Bonhams in Los Angeles this week. It's part of a larger collection of fantasy of general memorabilia from the estate of collector Wes Shank, who passed away in 2018.
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The nature of rare finds is that they often turn up in the most unlikely places. After all, if they were sitting in obvious places they wouldn't be such rare finds would they? Such is the case with this 1916 rookie card for baseball great Babe Ruth which was recently sold at auction for US$108,378.
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Our third annual survey of the most valuable scientific manuscripts and instruments sold during the calendar year is dominated by Nobel-Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman, with a $9.6 million copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America topping the list.
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One of the surviving sledges from Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1907 failed attempt to reach the South Pole is going up for auction at the Bonhams Bonhams Travel and Exploration Sale in London..
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