As Edinburgh prepares for the world’s biggest culture festival, its bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants will doubtless be stocking up to feed and water the estimated 400,000 visitors who will descend on them before and after they have satisfied their hunger for music, theatre and comedy. Doubtless, too, one of the most popular drinks to be downed will be whisky, a drink that gets its name from the gaelic usquebaugh, or ‘water of life’.

As the market for whisky shows today, this is no old man’s drink. Imbibers and collectors are often in their twenties and thirties, and the auction and investment markets for whisky see active buyers from these age groups too – more so than the wine industry.

In fact, for all the fuss made over gin in recent years, whisky has stolen a march on it as a collecting and investment marketplace.

Many other nations have been getting in on the act and making their own to a very high standard, from England Wales to, most notably, Japan and Australia.

Really, whisky operates two markets: one in age-old rare bottles and casks left over from defunct distilleries or held back as one-off specials from decades ago; and another comprising short-run bottlings or casks, often to celebrate anniversaries or special occasions.

With Bourbon, rye whiskey and other creations adding to the mix, this is an exciting market to become involved in.

The Moon Landings and first Moon Walk are among the most important events in recent human history – less for scientific reasons than for metaphorical ones, I’d say. So the 50th anniversary of the Neil Armstrong’s ‘Giant Leap’ was bound to create more than a flurry of interest when it came to auctions, and so it proved.

Simple pieces of equipment, along with photographs, have acquired huge iconic status, culminating in the $1.82 million taken for original tapes of that first famous Moon Walk.

Sold for a little over $200 in a government surplus auction in 1976 (can you believe that?!) to a prescient NASA intern, the tapes are apparently much sharper than the hazy moon shots transmitted across the planet on July 20, 1969 via what was then fairly new and basic satellite technology.

Looking at news reports in the past couple of weeks, it is clear that some of the images captured by the astronauts on the various Saturn and Apollo missions are now seen more as art than scientific record, none more so than Earthrise, the first view of the Earth as it rose above the lunar horizon, taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968 and hailed as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken” by nature photographer Galen Rowell.

The 50th anniversary may be over, but this now mature collecting field is here to stay.

I don’t know what it is about the art and antiques business, but it certainly attracts some strange and rather wonderful characters, many of whom delight in turning up at auction in person.

There is a tale of how, many years ago, an eager young man on the front desk at one of our leading auction houses was horrified to see a shambling wreck of a figure shuffle through the front door and start to make their way to the saleroom during a view.

Eager to save his employers and their well-to-do clients the embarrassment of having to rub shoulders with this tramp, he shot round the counter to intervene, politely but firmly escorting him back the way he came. Imagine his surprise when, having reached the front entrance, the elderly man was greeted by the doorman, who tipped his hat, adding: “Leaving so soon Your Grace?” Far from being an undesirable who had come in off the street to escape the cold, the aged eccentric was, in fact, a well-known landed duke and one of the auction house’s wealthiest patrons.

It is a lesson well learned in our industry not to judge a book by its cover. Somehow, the fine arts and first class craftsmanship attract the more singular characters of society – and often they are the ones with the deepest pockets, so a smile, friendly greeting and polite welcome is a prerequisite for all.

A car number plate, a luxury yacht, a gym sweatshirt, a copy of The Beano and a chesspiece. What do they all have in common? They are all items that have made the news over the past week or so either because they have sold at auction or are soon to be sold.

This snapshot of the variety of sought-after lots that can appear at any one time is one of the best illustrations I know of why this is a great business to be in, whether as an auctioneer, specialist, dealer or private collector.

Take the yacht, for instance. The 85ft motor yacht, named Caviar, had once belonged to a criminal and had been auctioned off by the police after being left abandoned for some time in Southampton. Although valued at several millions pounds, a young family snapped it up for just £66,000. Ok, they then spent a further £300,000 doing it up, but this auction opportunity gives them the chance to live the dream in considerable style as they set off on a round-the-world trip.

Renamed Juliette after the couple’s young daughter, the yacht will eventually return to these shores, providing the family with a substantial uplift o their original investment.