As anyone who visits our Fernhurst saleroom on a regular basis will know, working in the auction business is more of a vocation than a job. Days off are few and far between and even when they do come round, you always have your eye open for a business opportunity. It can be a bit of an obsession, and it’s not long before you realize that no matter how hard you try to relax, you are never really off duty.

I have even found myself, while on holiday, turning over the cups and saucers in tearooms to check the maker’s marks in the hope of a major discovery.

The upside of all this is that having spent several decades seeking out consignments before dispersing them from the rostrum, the excitement of uncovering something special and then making sure I do the owner proud when selling it is as thrilling today as ever. That thrill of the chase is what also drives dealers and collectors, to a great degree, as well as the desire to handle and own something of rare quality and craftsmanship.

One of the most interesting aspects of the job comes on valuation days, when we have no idea what people will bring in for assessment. Occasionally this leads to the discovery of a real gem!

Like any business, we suffer dull days and disappointment, but I can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing.

We all like solving puzzles because of the intrigue, drama, journey of discovery and sense of achievement. Perhaps that’s why so many cop series and whodunnits make it onto the small screen.

Perhaps, too, that’s why the treasure hunt nature of so many antiques programmes has thrived over the years.

If you think about it, collectors, dealers and auction house specialists are all detectives in their own way, seeking out the history and associations of objects, looking for clues as to who made them and how, and also identifying characteristics and qualities that affect value.

Sometimes it can be the apparently most insignificant piece of information that unlocks the secret.

I can remember being asked to identify the exact location of the view on a vintage postcard. The owner, who was selling an album of these views at auction, knew the area well but simply could not recognise the view depicted, which did not appear to go with the caption.

I studied it for about five minutes. In the foreground of the view was a river. Then I noticed that rowing boats tethered to the far bank were all drifting in the same direction, which, of course, would mean downstream. That was the key. Knowing the area myself and which way the river flowed, I realised that the photograph had been taken from the opposite bank and that the location being described in the caption was actually behind the photographer and across from the view in the photograph.

It might not have been the discovery of the century, or resulted in a fortune being made, but the sense of excitement and satisfaction at solving the riddle was just as palpable.

This is the sort of careful approach we need to take when making valuations on behalf of clients or drawing up catalogue descriptions.

March 3 marked a little-known but hugely important event: the 160th anniversary of the start of the Second Opium War, when France and the UK declared against China. It arose from British Imperialism, unsatisfied by the 1842 settlement under the Treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong to the British under lease and opened up five treaty ports to ease trade in opium, cheap Chinese labour – ‘coolies’ as they were then known – and improve diplomatic relations.

Chinese acts of aggression against the British in the interim had also not helped, and the French soon joined the British after the Chinese executed a leading French missionary.

The Indian Mutiny in May 1857 meant British troops had to be diverted from China, which delayed any outcome, but the Qing government could not sustain an effective defence as it also had to deal with the long-running Taiping Rebellion.

The cruel torture and murder of the British envoy Harry Parkes, and his entourage, led to the revenge sack and burning of the Summer Palaces in Beijing, from where many valuable works of art made their way abroad. Later legal sales of Chinese treasures have muddied the waters over what was looted and what exported legally, but together explain why so many amazing pieces have emerged at auction in London and Paris over the past few years.

Some evidence has just emerged of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) proving to be the Emperor’s New Clothes (ENC), as I suspected them to be.Apparently Sotheby’s, who expected to take $5.5 million at auction for a collection of CryptoPunks (me neither) sold as a single lot had to withdraw it at the last moment.According to the consignor (named as 0x650d) The Punk It! Sale, as it was christened, had fallen victim to a cyber scam, whereby the developers had made off with the digital assets, leaving the investors high and dry. “Nvm, decided to hodl,” he is reported as tweeting, adding even more cryptic content to this crypto crash.

A further comment suggested that this was an ‘event’ to embarrass the auction house for trying to take ‘punks’ mainstream – i.e. the traditional auction world trying to cash in on this cutting edge digital money spinner. Banksy was the first to do this with his automatic shredding of a work at the moment it sold for an eye-watering sum. However, in Banksy’s case, this just made the picture more desirable and it sold for considerably more in it shredded state some time later.

If, as at least one pundit put it, the ‘hodl’ turns out to be fatal to the CryptoPunks craze, I shall be weeping no tears. Expertise is important at auction for good reason and those who dabble in things they are not sufficiently appraised of are likely to get their fingers burnt.

Time for some paintings and fine antiques, I think!