Last week I told you about a young man whose dedication had built a substantial art and antiques business from nothing over just five years. Now I have further evidence of the enduring appeal of auctions and the indisputable fact that this process is not a dying tradition limited to old folk.

As the old year gave way to the new, one of the more interesting revelations was that Kim Kardashian (if you’ve not heard of her, where have you been?!) is ‘obsessed’ with auctions and has already put a significant sum where her mouth is by snapping up rock ’n’ roll relics under the hammer.

As a stocking filler for her six-year-old son North, she bought a jacket (for $65,625) that had once belonged to his idol, Michael Jackson, while adding the Smooth Criminal star’s white fedora ($7680) to top it off. Meanwhile Kardashian added rings ($7000 and $8000) worn by The King, Elvis Presley, to the list of gifts she handed to her brother for the Festive Season.

This is all pretty impressive stuff. Of course, the problem with buying all this for a six year old is how you go one better for next Christmas!

Anyone who thinks that young people today don’t know how to graft should read the tale of a twenty-something lad who set out to conquer the world of art and antiques just five years ago and has now built himself a business valued at around £350,000.

He’s still some way from realising his dream of having the most successful dealing business online in the country, but I take my hat off to him for what he’s done so far. It’s all been the result of a little bit of luck and a great deal of sweat. The luck was discovering that what everyone else took to be worthless tat – 20-plus year old children’s TV VHS videos – turned out to have a great deal of retro appeal that meant he could buy them for 10p to 50p at car boot sales and retail them online for up to £15. This gave him the nest egg for his proper launch into antiques and collectables, while brushing up his skills and knowledge of the auction world by working as a porter and a cataloguer at an auction house.

From the sound of it, there have been precious few hours left to do anything else, but imagine the sense of achievement. The future looks bright after all.

There are 25 drams in a bottle of whisky, a dram being a one-ounce shot, and the price of a dram at current rates of the 1926 Macallan coming to auction is round £60,000. No, that’s not a misprint, it’s the most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold at £1.5 million.

It belonged to the late Richard Gooding, who ironically made his fortune from bottling Pepsi Cola and who built the most enviable collection of whisky in the world.

Gooding housed his 3900 bottle collection a specially built bar in his Colorado home, travelling to Scotland on a regular basis to top it up.

That collection is now estimated at £8 million, and while I find the prices fairly staggering, it is the passion that whisky instils in collectors that is the really captivating aspect. It may be distilled alcohol, but its real value is in the romance of the history and landscape of Scotland, as well as the science of the process itself.

Japanese whiskies and single malts from Australia to Wales attract avid fans too, but it is the Scotch version in its many varieties – Highland, Islands, Lowlands and Speyside – that remains king. And the modern, hi-tech way it is marketed and sold these days has attracted a whole new collector base among the young. It’s an auctioneer’s dream really.

One of the most important factors affecting value at auction can be the historical significance of an item – copies of the US Declaration of Independence are among the best examples of this. Often overlooked, however, are those seemingly unimportant pieces of ephemera that cast light on largely forgotten episodes from our past.

I was reminded of this by a news article about two small sheets of paper consigned for auction that recall the 1740 frost fair on the Thames. Each expected to fetch around £1500, they detail all sorts of activities on the ice as the river froze over: football, horse racing, ox-roasting, merry-go-rounds, skittle alleys and puppet shows.

It’s hard to imagine the Thames freezing over now – in fact since the building of the comparatively modern set of bridges with their pontoons, this has been made much more unlikely. No one alive now can remember these events, so even the faded memory is lost, which makes these written records so much more important.

One of my favourite examples of this is a 15th century French illustrated manuscript that appears to show an early game of cricket. The known history of the game dates back to the late 16th century in south east England, although it is thought to have its origins in Anglo Saxon times. What if another document appeared that forced us to re-attribute its invention to another country?