Occasionally, a game-changing moment can happen for an area of collecting. One such happened ten years ago when a collector in Chicago published an internet blog about an unknown American street photographer named Vivian Maier, who had died that year.

The reaction was viral and Maier’s genius at last emerged from the shadows.

Born in 1926, Maier never married and worked much of her life as a nanny. In 1952, she bought her first Rolleiflex camera, and thus started a remarkable amateur career during which she took hundreds of thousands of street photographs, self-portraits and other subjects that have now been recognised as being on a par with the work of the leading American photographic artists of the 20^th century, like Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Helen Levitt.

Maier’s work, now published in a series of books, resides in major public and private collections, with several documentaries on her committed to film.

This has naturally done wonders for the value of prints and plates of her images, but it has also attracted huge numbers of people to the field of street photography and vernacular photography – anonymous everyday scenes of life from yesteryear – which has become a buzzing market at auction, at fairs and dealing online.

It’s not often that you can pin down the beginnings of something big to such a precise date, but that 2009 blog was certainly the catalyst here.

Working as a valuer can be a bit like working as a detective. While most things consigned for auction are instantly recognisable, others are not, and if there’s no paperwork to go with them, you have to rely on your knowledge and wits.

Most of you will have witnessed how experts start to go about deciphering the unknown from watching the Antiques Roadshow. The first thing they will do is look at the item to see if it has/had any apparent function. What is it made from? Are there any identifying marks, as there so often are with porcelain and silver, for instance? Is there a maker’s label? Is there any documentation, no matter how flimsy, that comes with it? Finally, how did it come to be in the consignor’s hands?

Piecing the story together is one of the most fascinating aspects of working in this wonderful business of ours. It can be frustrating but never boring. Sometimes, when you have unpacked all the clues, you find you have a real treasure in your hands.

No matter how long you work as a valuer and auctioneer, there is always another surprise around the corner. The latest was a strange brass instrument with a turning handle identified by a colleague at another auction house as a tobacco shredder.

One of the most successful and interesting dealers and collectors of modern times is the American Warner Dailey. Now in his seventies, he came to England in the early 1970s. His most important client was the businessman and philanthropist Malcom Forbes.

Warner has a never ending list of stories about his experiences, the common theme of which is the fact that he has always been entirely immersed in his passion for what and why people collect.

He started as 17-year-old, clearing out the attic of a wealthy family who lived nearby in Upstate New York. They went by the name Pierpont Morgan and his success in selling their cast-offs made them take notice of this precocious teenager. However, it was his canny foresight in appreciating the future collectable attraction of New England quilts that also set him on the road to riches. Touring round in a beaten up old car in the run-up to Halloween, he would offer 50 cents and a new blanket to protect the precious pumpkins from frost to any householder who would hand over their disregarded hand-stitched quilt covering the vegetable plot.

Warner made a small fortune as a result, but he would never have spotted the opportunity if had not been for his early and enduring passion for the art and craft of his fellow countrymen.

The beginning of September heralds the start of the new school year and the return to work for children and adults after the summer break. While the long hazy days of summer (we’ll draw a veil over the neverending rain at the beginning of August) fade over the horizon, in the auction world this is the time for a fresh start too.

It used to be that July and August were all but lost, as far as business was concerned, as the rest of the world headed for the beach or the airport, but with the internet and today’s global audience of bidders, the auction schedule in Fernhurst cannot afford to let up even for a minute. Of course it’s a double-edged sword; summer used to be the time for putting your feet up, reviewing the season and getting everything shipshape for September. Now, while September still means a reboot in the sales schedule, July and August have become as active as the rest of the year, with consignments flying in as the public understands that bids are no longer limited to the local town and a thirty-mile radius roundabout.

These days it is commonplace to have several hundred bidders from fifty or more countries register for a special oriental, Islamic Art or Fine Antique sale. The antique really has benefitted from the modern when it comes to technology… but spare a thought for me and my colleagues – we have yet to have our holidays!