Feb 23, 2026
When something is aesthetically appealing, beautifully made or intrinsically valuable, it is easy to see why bidders will compete for it at auction.
Rarities, too, command attention, and for the rarest even poor condition can be no barrier to an impressive hammer price.
But some people like oddities, even the macabre, and I have come across quite a few in my long career at the rostrum.
Take, for example, The New Patent Exploding Trench. A WW1 toy produced briefly by Britains, it involved a wooden and fabric trench loaded with six lead riflemen of the Gloucestershire Regiment. When hit, a specially placed flagstaff set off a cap, which made a loud report, shaking the trench and “killing” the soldiers. Why a British factory should have put British soldiers rather than the enemy in the trench is anyone’s guess, but it was a marketing disaster as a result and the toy was soon withdrawn. The result? A rare collectable that has made a decent four-figure sum in the three or four times it has appeared at auction over the past 30 years.
Perhaps the most chilling thing I have seen was not at auction but at a restoration firm. What looked like a framed piece of parchment turned out to be a collection of tattoos cut from the bodies of French soldiers in the field of Waterloo. Now who would want to buy that?
Perhaps the most disturbing item I have come across is a Fiji Mermaid. This has its origins among Japanese fishermen, who sewed parts of different animals together to create chimera – in this case the head and arms of a monkey sewn to the body and tail of a fish.
They first came to Western notice after the captain of an American ship, thinking it a real creature, bought one from Japanese sailors in the early 19th century for thousands of dollars. The great American showman PT Barnum displayed it as a curiosity in the 1840s.
As a trip to Wikipedia will attest, Barnum understood how to generate publicity, writing to the newspapers under various pseudonyms on the subject of the Fiji Mermaid and creating a ruse whereby his associate booked into a Philadelphia hotel, secretly showing the creature to the manager, who then insisted on spreading the word and staging a display to a select audience, including journalists.
Probably destroyed in a fire around 20 years later, by then the legend had caught on and many copies were made. Look it up on Google images and see one for yourself.
Each example is usually named after the town in whose museum it now rests.
Jan 26, 2026
For all you romantics out there, the impending excitement of Valentine’s Day is doubtless at the front of your minds right now. But you should also know that it is an exciting theme for collectors, because vintage Valentine cards have all the attributes required for attracting them, and some can sell for hundreds of pounds.
Legend has it that the first Valentine message was sent in the 15th century, but the first cards arrived with the dawn of the modern postal service in the first half of the 19th century. The earliest known printed Valentine’s card dates to 1797 and was published on January 12 that year by John Fairburn of 146 Minories, London. It depicted a young woman in a landscape setting at the centre, surrounded by cupids, flowers, birds and other symbols of love, as well as messages. In 2013, that made a creditable £450 at auction.
Elaborate cards decorated with lace and ribbons – and even some with moving parts – demanded a considerable outlay on the part of the purchaser. Most popular were the ‘marionette’ cards, with their paper dolls with moving limbs, created by Raphael Tuck, who worked under Royal Warrant.
Celebrated artists and illustrators of the day were drafted in to create designs which collectors seek out now, among them children’s author Kate Greenaway.
The Museum of London has a collection of more than 1700 Valentine’s cards.
It’s staggering to think that by mid Victorian times, the Valentine industry in Britain was so huge that it is thought the public spent hundreds of millions of pounds a year on cards and gifts for their loved ones. Today it is well over £1.5 billion in the UK.
The United States dwarfs that figure, generating almost $15 billion worth of retail sales each year. To put it in context, that is around a quarter to a third of the value of the entire global art market – auctions, dealer and gallery sales, fairs, private deals and so on.
Back in 2003, a Valentine card sent by Princess Diana sold for ten times its estimate at £2000, while in 2012 one sent by Amy Winehouse made £1600.
Dec 27, 2025
As the new year arrives, thoughts inevitably turn to new beginnings, including the prospect of spring cleaning or having a clear-out. If you do decide to de-clutter, downsize or otherwise have a bit of a tidy-up, you may well find things among your possessions that have the potential to earn you a bit of money. If so, here are a couple of tips to remember.
Firstly, don’t spruce up anything antique in the hope of making it more attractive to buyers. You may well find that you damage them or make them less appealing. Dealers, for instance, generally prefer to buy things in ‘untouched’ condition, as it gives them the opportunity to have them restored and build in their own margin. Take that away and they tend to lose interest.
No matter how lacking in detail, if you have any paperwork linked to the items in question, include it with the consignment. It can make all the difference. In many cases, you won’t have any, but if you have memories of that clock sitting on your grandfather’s mantelpiece for the past 50 years, write a note saying so and date it. It may not be much, but it helps a little to fill in the gaps of the piece’s provenance, and that’s what every buyer looks for.
2026 also promises to be an exceptional year for all things American. July 4 will mark the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, so expect specialist auctions and exhibitions linked to that in the coming months. Will a copy of the Declaration come up for auction? It would be worth putting a bet on that. Around three or four copies of the first 1776 printing, known as the Dunlap Broadsides, remain in private hands. One sold in 2000 for $8.1 million.
It is also the centenary of two of the greatest female icons of the 20th century: the late Queen Elizabeth II (April 21) and Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe (June 1). Jazz great Miles Davis would also have turned 100 (May 26), while Walt Disney would be celebrating his 125th (December 5). October 31, 1926 was the fateful date that Harry Houdini failed to make his final escape. And to show how good the Catholic Church is at keeping records, October 3 marks the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi.
Nov 25, 2025
Greetings cards initially became popular in the United States in the 1880s, thanks to the development of offset lithography, a form of printing.
Hallmark, one of the biggest names in greetings cards, has been around since the earliest days, when savvy British makers saw what was happening in the US and started exporting cheaper folded versions there not long before the First World War.
Understandably, collectors will pay more for the rarer early handmade Valentines of the Victorian era, but some of the earliest printed cards can prove just as rare. Certainly opting for printed cards is a less expensive way of entering the collecting field.
The first Christmas cards were hand-coloured for Sir Henry Cole, founder of the Victoria & Albert Museum, who ordered 1000 in 1843. They depicted a family raising their charged glasses in a toast above a draped banner carrying the words A Merry Christmas. He used half himself and sold the rest for a shilling apiece.
It’s thought around nine or ten survive, and each is valued at around £10,000 today.
Some of the most sought-after Christmas cards today are those designed by well-known artists of the late Victorian and early 20th century periods. Kate Greenaway, who illustrated many of the most popular children’s books of the 1880s and 90s is a favourite, along with her great rival at the time, Walter Crane.
Perhaps the most desirable cards, though are the early Hold-to-Light cards depicting Father Christmas, or Santa Claus. These were generally die-cut and got their name because if you held them up to the light, the die-cut parts lit up, creating a glowing Christmas scene.
When first produced in the US, in postcard form, these were the preserve of the wealthy as each could cost as much as a day’s wages for a working man. Nowadays while religious or other scenes can be had for as little as around £20, the pick of the Santa cards can cost £400.
Collectors tend to specialize in subject matter, such as comic cards, or anniversary type, such as birthday or Christmas cards. Condition can matter a great deal. If they are unused and have not been stuck in albums with the accompanying sticky tape. And particular printers, such as De La Rue, also tempt collectors.
E-cards, and the cost of postage, have largely killed off the traditional Christmas greetings cards, which is a shame, but enough goodwill remains for the tradition to continue.
Nov 5, 2025
Gold, silver and jewellery are doing extremely well at auction, so if you have anything you would like valued, do bring it along to our saleroom and we would be happy to help.
Alternatively, do send us an email or give us a call at sales@johnnicholsons.com or 01428 653727.
Nov 4, 2025
As Remembrance Day falls, it is worth recalling not just the fallen but the medals they received in recognition of their bravery and sacrifice. The field of campaign medal collecting can serve as a poignant reminder of those who have fallen, the qualities they had and the reasons they were prepared to give their lives in the service of their country.
Every medal counts, but of course it is usually those most rarely awarded – the VCs, MCs, GCs, DFCs, DFMs and CGMs among them – that carry the most extraordinary tales. And that’s what it’s all about in the end.
Materially, the medals themselves are little more than fairly inexpensive metal held up by a bit of ribbon, but what they stand for is what counts as they provide a physical link to these exceptional characters of the past, much in the way that religious relics have done for so much longer.
This explains why this field of collecting has grown hugely over the past 20 years or so, with prices at auction surging to several hundreds of thousands of pounds for the most sought-after VCs, and private sales rising to well over £1m.
The need to feel the touch of greatness was well illustrated a few years ago when the remains of a grasshopper were discovered trapped in the paint of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 picture Olive Trees.
Rather like those gorgeous pieces of amber you occasionally see at auction, which trapped unrecognisable insects sometimes hundreds of millions of years ago as tree sap before fossilising, the discovery created a seemingly direct link to a specific moment in time, over 135 years on, compressing the years in between so that you could almost see and hear Vincent slapping the paint onto the canvas. This grasshopper was there when he did it.
These direct connections are what many people look for when buying things at auction and explain the huge price differences between artworks described in the catalogue as ‘follower of’ (someone unidentified working in the style of a well-known artist at around the same time), ‘school of’ (a work of the time in the style of the artist), ‘studio of’ (a work from the artist’s studio or closely associated with them), ‘attributed to’ (probably, but not certainly, by the artist) and ‘autograph work’ (categorically by the artist).
In the art world, there is nothing quite like being close enough to touch the hand of the creator.
