One of my favourite stories of the past week or so has been about the sale of Napoleon’s trademark bicorn hat. So the story goes, the seller did not know when they bought it that it had once belonged to the great French general and emperor. Only when they had investigated inscriptions on it, its dimensions and, ultimately, hairs found within it, was it confirmed to have been the real deal.

Estimated at £100,000-150,000, it seems a conservative price bearing in mind that other Napoleonic hats have made up to £1 million.

The emergence of the hat at auction set me thinking about what other lost treasures might come to light. Which would I most like to see and what might they be worth?

The list may be endless, but assuming you could verify them as the genuine article, few things would excite potential bidders as much as King John’s Treasure, lost in The Wash just over 800 years ago. A modern-day speculator claims to have found the site where it lies near Sutton Bridge – we shall see. No one is certain of its exact contents, but if it lives up to the legend then it must be worth tens of millions of pounds at least.

Another great loss was the Amber Room, presented to Tsar Peter the Great by the Prussian king Fredrich Wilhelm I in 1716. Looted by the Nazis, it was lost from view until salvage experts recently claimed to have found it in a sunken warship off Poland. Divers, however, said they found nothing.

The ultimate lost treasure? Surely it has to be the legendary Holy Grail, an item that would be utterly priceless.

What is art? How many times have I heard that question asked? And how many times answered? If anyone ever thinks they have found the definitive response, they would probably make a fortune.

You may think it doesn’t matter, and for the most part it may not. Certainly, some things clearly are art and some things are not. The difficulty is establishing the boundary between the two; a bit like the exact moment you go from being awake to being asleep.

What made me get all philosophical about this was the news that what is arguably now Banksy’s most famous artwork, Love is in the bin – previously Girl with Balloon – was back on the market and expected to make up to $8 million at auction.

It became his most celebrated – or notorious – artwork after it was shredded live during its last sale three years ago. Was it an automated reaction to the hammer falling at just over a million pounds or a remotely controlled process (by someone acting for the artists in the room?)?

Apparently, it was Banksy’s social comment on the art market, which he holds in contempt as he continues to rake in millions from it.

Whether it was a genuine attempt to destroy market value in an expensive painting or not, the controversial incident only added to the work’s allure and price tag. But why? Is it a better picture for being shredded or not? Is its true value found in Banksy’s destructive treatment of it or in his original concept? Should it be seen now as a picture or a piece of performance art?

I’ll leave you to ponder on all that. But what it tells me is that art does not have to be beautiful to be successful.

With the Polo at Cowdray, the South Downs on the horizon and racing at Goodwood, there’s no doubting we live in horse country, which may explain why equine pictures do so well in our auctions.

Nearly everyone has heard of George Stubbs, recognised as the finest painter of horses in the artistic canon. Other great names among British artists include John Frederick Herring Senior, Alfred Munnings, Cecil Alden and John Skeaping.

Equal talents in this discipline may be found across Europe and further afield. Of the great animal painters, few compare with John James Audubon and his famous and eye-wateringly expensive The Birds of America. However, news of a remarkable set of paintings to be sold in October sheds the spotlight on the remarkable art of Indian painters commissioned to paint animals, birds, plants and architecture by the East India Company in the 18th and 19th centuries.

For a long time, what are known as the Company School paintings were credited to the officials who commissioned them rather than the artists, but the record is now slowly being set straight, first by an exhibition at the Wallace Collection and soon by the auction itself.

My favourite work is a painting of a Great Indian Fruit Bat in full flight. It was painted by an artists called Bhawani Das.

It is heartening to see that the public interest surrounding these works that has arisen from the auction is helping the real artists to get due recognition at last.

It used to be that someone consigned something for auction, it got a brief description in a catalogue (if there was one), a dealer or private buyer would bid for it successfully and then they would take it away. That was some decades ago.

Nowadays, for auctioneers worth their salt, it’s a much more complex business. Quite apart from all the compliance paperwork, we take much better care of the items consigned, study and catalogue them clearly, make sure they are stored safely and do our best to present them well for the view.

Add to this all the online commitment, from numerous photographs to condition reports, maintaining a website, social media and marketing auctions far and wide – especially now bidders at any sale can come from dozens of countries – and it is easy to see where the time and money goes.

The blessings of a much wider customer base bring with them greater logistical challenges; items often need to be carefully packed and dispatched abroad, with all the relevant customs declarations and so on. This means that we create business for logistics firms, as well as other ancillary businesses that support the nation’s art and antiques market, now third only to the United and States and China in size and importance globally.

So every time you either decide to consign something like a picture or piece of jewellery to auction, or indeed buy the same, you are setting off a positive chain of activity that supports the economy in a myriad ways. That’s a cheering thought.