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Good morning collectors. It’s Saturday, May 23. An unusual Beatle instrument is heading to auction, a historic stamp sale is on the cards, and we probe Garbo’s privacy. Sign up for free here.
Breaking News
Beatles Fool on the Hill flute to auction
You’ve quite possibly whistled along with the lines played on a flute due to sell at auction.
Jack Ellory played on the Beatles’ whimsical 1967 song The Fool on the Hill. He also carried the flute through decades of session, TV- and film-soundtrack work. This impactful woodwind instrument will auction in June.
Read the full story with sale estimates here.
A colourful poster for one of the darkest Brit flicks ever made. Auctioning at Bonhams.
Spy-themed sale brings Bond and Enigma together
Bonhams’ (quite loosely) themed espionage sale this month hopes to appeal to collectors across multiple niches. Will it work?
Espionage: Fact & Fiction signals collectors of militaria, who can try to secure a sought-after Enigma coding machine (estimate £120,000 to £160,000). There are also original WWII intelligence reports, biographies of agents, and Soviet mole Guy Burgess’s signature.
Film prop fans will dive in for a James Bond scubacraft from the set of Spectre (estimate £50,000 to £70,000). Britain’s favourite spy is also represented by Ian Fleming’s books (a very limited centenary set of complete works could make £30,000), a Sean Connery letter, and multiple film posters and stills.
The theme stretches to breaking point to include some lovely noir, detective and gangster film posters. A Get Carter poster seems sure to appreciate from a £1,500 opening bid.
This is a sale of the internet age, allowing fans of rare books, film memorabilia, military intelligence, autographs and more to dip in to chase their enthusiasms. We will likely see more in future.
In the Know
Selling this week
Iron Age coins: There are some lovely Iron Age coins, including detectorist finds, from the Iceni, Cantii and other peoples auctioning next week at Noonans Mayfair. A particularly striking gold stater from the Catuvellauni people of south-east England has a £400 top estimate.
Value in watch sale: Well below the million-dollar headline lots in Christie’s Important Watches sale in Hong Kong you can find beautiful, classic 1950s Patek Philippe watches at around $5,000.
Sold last week
Early postal stationery: Mulready Envelopes failed on release alongside the much more popular Penny Black, but, an 1840 example succeeded beyond expectations at Just Collecting Auction’s Crown Collection sale on Thursday, selling for £13,000 against a £4,000 top estimate.
The droid card you want: An “Artoo-Detoo” from the first Topps series of Star Wars cards sold for $10,000 at Heritage Auctions yesterday.
Events & Exhibitions
Nerding out in London: Autograph sessions will be a major attraction at MCM London Comic Con at ExCel as the biggest pop culture event of the UK’s spring bank holiday weekend.
The birth of modern art: Opening this Sunday at the Grand Palais in Paris, Matisse 1941 – 1954 is a heralded blockbuster with more than 300 works from the French pioneer’s later career.
A – Z
Art: The critics are having their say on Winston Churchill’s art ahead of an exhibition opening at the Wallace Collection in London today. At auction, the war leader’s art has made £7 million, now you can see if that’s because of its quality or who painted it.
Autographs: Marilyn Monroe’s signature on a cheque to her early LA haunt the Beverley Carlton Hotel looks great value with a $1,500 estimate at Julien’s Auctions sale on June 1, Marilyn’s centenary birthday.
Books: Rare book dealer Adam Weinberger has named the five most lucrative subjects in his business. They are the occult, Americana, old manuscripts, old English bibles, and African-Americana.
Cars: Mecum Auctions has announced the sale of the automotive collection of Nascar tycoon Jack Roush. Alongside championship racers are early Fords in a significant auction set for Nashville in September.
Historical documents: Bat Masterson is one of the most extraordinary figures in American history. As Sheriff of Dodge City he was a genuine frontier gun fighter. Yesterday, a subpoena signed by him in that role sold for $32,422, surpassing its $20,000 estimate.
Music memorabilia: A guitar played and signed by the greatest guitarist ever, Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, will sell at Gardiner Houlgate next month. No longer in the “where is it now file”, the unique Ernie Ball Music Man instrument was made for 2008’s Live Earth show.
Numismatics: The 100 final nominees for the Coin of the Year Award 2025 have been published by Numismatic News. The winners will be announced at the American Numismatic Association’s World’s Fair of Money on August 27, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Sports memorabilia: The sun is out here, thoughts are shifting towards Wimbledon at the end of next month, and Budds want to see your tennis memorabilia for their tennis auction opening on June 28.
Stamps: Newly appointed Philippines secretary of budget and management, Kim Robert de Leon, is a world-record holding philatelist, who since 2022 has held the largest collection of stamps featuring Popes.
Trading cards: One of the most popular trading card games, Magic the Gathering, now has an exhaustive online collection of writing about the game called The Library of Leng.
The Long Read
How do you feel about owning a literal piece of your heroes?
Whatnots
A quick dip into…
The Buccleuch Block of 2d blue stamps
Next week could see an epochal philatelic sale at what auctioneers Siegel Auction Galleries call “the greatest stamp discovery in modern history”.
Before its potential move to a new home here’s everything you need to know about the Buccleuch Block.
- These are Two Penny Blues, the second ever adhesive postage stamp, issued in 1840 alongside the Penny Black.
- Both were scheduled for official release on May 6, 1840, but some Blacks sneaked out early.
- The two designs are identical.
- Blues were printed from two plates until August 1840.
- 6,460,000 were printed.
- The Buccleuch Block was discovered in the library of Dalkeith Palace, the seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, in 1945.
- It is 48 stamps in a part sheet, the largest known multiple of either of the first two stamp issues.
- The Royal Philatelic Collection has a block of 38. A part sheet of 168 Blues was divided into smaller blocks.
- The block comes from the rarer plate 2 and is four rows (Q to T) and 12 columns, A to L.
- The margin instructs postal clerks and buyers how to use this new tech.
- The Buccleuch Block was sold first, privately, for £6,500 in 1946.
The auction of the Buccleuch Block will take place next Thursday at the Boston 2026 World Expo.
Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel, in which she said, “I want to be alone.” Discover just how seriously she meant it below in Quirky.
Inside: Rare guitars for ordinary mortals
The most valuable guitars are those associated with star players, like David Gilmour’s Black Strat that made $14.6 million earlier this year.
But, pioneering and historic instruments also have value, and are much more likely to show up in your attic or at the local garage sale.
Here are 10 models to look out for.
- 1958 – 59 Gibson Explorer. An unusual shape that was unpopular on release and is now worth upwards of $250,000.
- 1936 – 42 Martin D-45. Still considered among the best-quality acoustics ever made. Hand-produced in small numbers, and costing a lot at the time; they’re now in the same price bracket as the Explorer.
- 1958 – 60 Gibson Les Paul. A legend now, disregarded and unloved on release, making the early Les Pauls super sought after and worth around the $200,000 to $300,000 mark.
- 1930 – 33 Martin OM-45. It was the Great Depression. Luxury goods weren’t flying off any shelves, and this beautifully crafted guitar was only made in tiny numbers. Expect to pay $200,000 or more now.
- 1958 -59 Gibson Flying V. Having quirky taste is a good thing it seems, because if you’d picked up a Flying V off the shelf you could now sell it for over $200,000. Again, an unloved shape that was before its time.
- 1931 – 36 Martin D-28. Another peerless acoustic which was in limited supply from its 1930s birth. Worth over $150,000 today.
- 1928 – 42 Martin 000-45. A model that introduced a number of structural innovations, including a 14-fret neck, that make it worth around $100,000.
- 1938 – 42 Gibson Super Jumbo. A massive, heavily decorated cowboy guitar that also showed up in Beatle hands and is worth around the $100,000.
- 1950 – 51 Fender Broadcaster. The first Fender was later renamed as the Telecaster, and this simple, revolutionary instrument will cost you $50,000 or more in 2026.
- 1959 – 62 Fender Stratocaster. While Gibson made electrics that looked like traditional acoustic instruments, Leo Fender’s space age names and designs won the initial popularity contest as rock ‘n’ roll became pop. At least $40,000 for the earliest incarnations.
Quirky: Golden Age Hollywood legend Greta Garbo’s wish to “be alone” went beyond her screen persona. Her disdain for publicity was real and the Swedish-born actor loved to play up to her reputation as an untouchable ice queen. At the height of her fame, unopened fan letters were burned by the sackful. When she did sign personal letters, it was often using false names. As a result, Greta’s autograph was anecdotally the most valuable in the world during her lifetime – a rare achievement. Cheques, contracts and legal documents are still the best source for Garbo signatures that typically cost four-figure sums.
Anniversary this week: A little boy called Robert Zimmerman was born 85 years ago tomorrow in Duluth, Minnesota. At the same time, around 4,000 miles away, a poet was coping with the chaos of war: his beloved Swansea had been blitzed in February, and he was in London seeking work to pay off his debts. The poet was Dylan Thomas, whose name Minnesota Bob would take on to become Bob Dylan, bringing a poetic skill to popular songwriting that won him a Nobel prize for Literature in 2016. A draft of Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone sold for $2 million in 2014.
Another Rolex? Probably. They were on the heavy side, but they worked. And at least you could see the time in the dark with those big phosphorous numerals.
― James Bond in Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
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