As Remembrance Day falls, it is worth recalling not just the fallen but the medals they received in recognition of their bravery and sacrifice. The field of campaign medal collecting can serve as a poignant reminder of those who have fallen, the qualities they had and the reasons they were prepared to give their lives in the service of their country.

Every medal counts, but of course it is usually those most rarely awarded – the VCs, MCs, GCs, DFCs, DFMs and CGMs among them – that carry the most extraordinary tales. And that’s what it’s all about in the end.

Materially, the medals themselves are little more than fairly inexpensive metal held up by a bit of ribbon, but what they stand for is what counts  as they provide a physical link to these exceptional characters of the past, much in the way that religious relics have done for so much longer.

This explains why this field of collecting has grown hugely over the past 20 years or so, with prices at auction surging to several hundreds of thousands of pounds for the most sought-after VCs, and private sales rising to well over £1m.

The need to feel the touch of greatness was well illustrated a few years ago when the remains of a grasshopper were discovered trapped in the paint of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 picture Olive Trees.

Rather like those gorgeous pieces of amber you occasionally see at auction, which trapped unrecognisable insects sometimes hundreds of millions of years ago as tree sap before fossilising, the discovery created a seemingly direct link to a specific moment in time, over 135 years on, compressing the years in between so that you could almost see and hear Vincent slapping the paint onto the canvas. This grasshopper was there when he did it.

These direct connections are what many people look for when buying things at auction and explain the huge price differences between artworks described in the catalogue as ‘follower of’ (someone unidentified working in the style of a well-known artist at around the same time), ‘school of’ (a work of the time in the style of the artist), ‘studio of’ (a work from the artist’s studio or closely associated with them), ‘attributed to’ (probably, but not certainly, by the artist) and ‘autograph work’ (categorically by the artist).

In the art world, there is nothing quite like being close enough to touch the hand of the creator.

It’s worth doing your homework whether you are preparing to sell at auction or buy. One of the most important reasons is provenance. This is the history of ownership of an item. The more significant it is, the better, and if you can trace it back through solid documentary evidence to the point of its creation, all the better.

Many and varied are the tales of people who let something go for a song only to discover later that it was worth a small fortune. By the same token, experts and others who have bothered to investigate things that turn up in saleroom catalogues properly can snap up a bargain.

So what is the best advice to follow when confronted by a lot that piques your interest?

If possible – and this is often not the case now, thanks to the internet and access to auctions on a global basis – go to the view and look at the item in person.

Ask yourself a few questions? Does it look like the real deal? Does the estimate reflect its value? If you look past the flaws, damage etc, does the quality really shout out from beneath?

If you are an expert in your field, it’s true that first impressions really do count. You may immediately recognise the typical motifs or style of an artist that others have missed; or you may also spot that something isn’t quite right and the mark and period Qianlong vase you hankered after is actually a later copy.

One of my favourite examples of close inspection paying off was a set of daguerreotypes – one of the earliest forms of photographic development – that came up for auction a number of years ago. Taken in Italy, France and Switzerland in the mid 19th century, they were attractive but pitched at no more than £80. They sold for £75,000, but, as it turned out, were worth a great deal more because it transpired that they were the lost images of John Ruskin’s European tour. As the pre-eminent art critic of the 19th century, Ruskin was fascinated by the art and architecture of places such as Venice and was one of the first to catch them in photographs. Although it took the eye of a Ruskin specialist to spot the link, the discovery was a sensation and the previously unknown images were later published in a book.

So, one of the reasons that auctions continue to prove so popular is that on occasion they can be a bit like winning the lottery.

Watching the Antiques Roadshow recently, I was reminded of the most important question a professional should ask when valuing something: why are you having it valued? This is because valuations will differ depending on the answer.

This might sound a little odd, but it’s logical, if you think about it. Let’s consider a diamond ring, for instance. If you want it valued for insurance purposes, you are going to need enough cover to replace it at retail cost. If you want it valued for sale at auction or to a dealer, the valuer will consider what a dealer might pay for it, so that they can add enough profit on to it to make it worthwhile buying for resale. In general, the insurance valuation in this case would be around four times the resale value at auction or to a dealer. That accounts for production costs, retail costs and the retail profit of the replacement ring.

Probate is another scenario. In that instance, a valuer is likely to provide a value on the low side, which is still realistic. So, it is possible to have four different values for the same item, all of which are valid.

This is why, for the most part, when you watch the Roadshow these days, the experts will specify how they are valuing what you present them with. “You could expect to get X at auction”, or “You should insure this for Y”, they will say. Anyone who simply says “It is worth X” is not really being much help unless they qualify the statement by explaining the circumstances of the valuation.

Another commonplace query when people consign items for auction concerns the reserve. This is the price below which the item will not be sold, to protect the seller from losing out. It is different from the estimate, which is made public and is the price range within which the item is expected to sell. Quite often the reserve will be fixed at the low estimate. Under English law it can’t be higher than the low estimate as that would be misleading potential buyers into thinking they could acquire it at the low estimate.

Pricing a piece for auction can be a tricky business in the same way that pricing a house for sale is. Make the estimate too high and you put off buyers; make it too low and you may annoy the consignor, while giving potential bidders an unrealistic impression of what it is worth – and that can be damaging for an auctioneer’s reputation.

Those who price their homes correctly for sale can attract a high number of viewings resulting in competition that puts the prices up as part of a bidding war. The same is true for chattels auctions, where the ideal price guide is one that remains within the realistic range of an item’s value but is low enough to entice bidders.

The system of British hallmarks dates back a few centuries, but the concept of hallmarking dates back thousands of years, to the time when coins first emerged as currency. Individually stamped by local officials, those early coins would have been made of electrum (a mix of gold and silver) or silver, and the stamp would denote the purity of the metal, which in turn attested to its value. It was much later that base metal coins represented far greater values, effectively acting as tokens rather than carrying their actual value in their make-up.

From the earliest times one of the problems with currency losing its value was the clipping of coins, where the unscrupulous would harvest minute amounts of silver from the edge of individual coins stamped for a specific value. Eventually they would have enough silver to either mint new coins or make other valuable items. However, this also meant that the currency in circulation depreciated in value. The authorities put a stop to this trick in the reign of Charles II by introducing lettering around the edge of coins.

If debasement of the coinage – as even happened officially under Henry VIII to save money – was an age-old problem, so was debasement of objects made from precious metals. How did you know that the ring or goblet you bought was pure gold or silver, and not made from something cheaper, mixed in with a little of the precious metal to give it the appearance of something more valuable?

In England, King Edward I started to tackle the problem by introducing a law in 1300 making it compulsory for all silver objects to meet a sterling silver standard of 92.5% purity. To ensure this, he ordered that objects passing an official test or ‘assay’ should be marked with a leopard’s head.

Edward’s grandson, Edward III, granted a charter to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths 27 years later, and all objects made from gold had to be sent to the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London for assaying and approval. Hence the word ‘hallmark’.

Regional assay offices in England for silver were set up later in Sheffield, Birmingham, York, Exeter, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich and Chester. In Scotland, Edinburgh and Glasgow had assay offices, and in Ireland there was an office in Dublin. Sheffield, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Dublin survive. Of the others, some (Chester and Glasgow) lasted well into the 20th century, while others (Norwich, closed 1702) have been long gone.