Carl Asplund’s watch has reached the Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England and is anticipated to fetch £15,000-£20,000 ($30,000-$39,000).

The watch was recovered from the body of Carl Asplund who sinked on the Titanic and is part of the Lillian Asplund compilation of Titanic associated objects that will be auctioned on 19 April.

Asplund was just 5 in April 1912, when the Titanic hit an iceberg and submerged on its maiden cruise from England to New York. Amongst the 1500 others who died included her father and three siblings.

Rare collection of work by Charles Dickens will reach the Christie’s auction block in New York on 2 April and is expected to fetch $2 million.

This includes an alliance copy of “Oliver Twist,” which is emblazoned by Dickens to a fellow author and is anticipated to generate $200,000-$300,000.

Eyebrows are raised for high price tag attached to the books and manuscripts. And the very reason that it is not only the first edition of Oliver Twist, one of the great novels of English literature but also it was adorned by Dickens to William Harrison Ainsworth, a novelist colleague.

CAPTAIN Haddock would have choked on his whisky: original artwork for a Tintin comic book fetched a record US$1.2 million at a Paris auction on March 29th.

The 1932 oil painting, executed for the iconic cover of Tintin in America smashed the previous world record for an original comic book work.

That was set in March 2007 when a drawing by artist Enki Bilal called Bleu Sang (Blue Blood) fetched €177,000.

Melted down, a gold Ming Dynasty bowl would sell for about $30,000, twice as much as four years ago. At a Hong Kong auction next month, the imperial vessel may fetch more than HK$60 million ($7.7 million), Sotheby’s said.

Inscribed with dragons and set with pearls, turquoise, rubies and sapphires, the three-legged vessel — made with 1.3 kilograms of 18K gold — is the highlight of Sotheby’s auction of more than 25 gold and precious-metal objects in Hong Kong on April 11, the New York-based auction house said. The lots may raise a combined HK$100 million, said Sotheby’s.[...]

“Timing couldn’t be better,” said Tian Kai, a Beijing- based art dealer. “Gold is all the rage right now.”

Sotheby’s Hong Kong was offered the consignment in mid- January, days before the cut-off date for assembling lots for the auction, said Nicolas Chow, the auction house’s head of Chinese ceramics and artworks. He declined to identify the seller. Several European and Asian private collectors have inquired about the consignment.

“Gold is the most comprehensive marker of luxury in ancient cultures, including the Ming Dynasty,” said Chow. “If fine porcelain from these eras could fetch record prices, there is no reason art made with costlier material couldn’t fare better.”

The record for a Qing ceramic was set in November 2006 when Hong Kong businesswoman Alice Cheng paid HK$151.3 million for a porcelain bowl at a Christie’s International auction. Several private collectors, including casino magnate Stanley Ho, have bought imperial artifacts at auction and donated them to China in the past few years. [...]

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To contact the reporters on this story: Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net

A nude portrait of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni will go under the hammer in New York next month, according to auctioneers Christie’s.

The 13 x 10 1/8 inch gelatin silver black and white photograph was taken in 1993, when Bruni was one of the world’s top fashion models, and is being sold by art collector Gert Elfering.

It is expected to fetch $3,000 to $4,000 when it is sold in New York on April 10, according to the Christie’s web site.

Sotheby’s lately sold a Guarneri violin once a lavish possession by the musician Henri Vieuxtemps to a Russian entrepreneur for the maximum auction price ever paid for any musical instrument. Word is around that Maxim Viktorov paid an unrevealed sum, “well in excess” of pre-recorded last auction of the device. The preceding record was inked by a 1708 Stradivarius identified as the Hammer that got sold for $3.54 million at New-York based Christie’s in May 2006.

Whilst the record for a Guarneri was set up during an auction in 1988, when a 1743 specimen from Cremona generated $1,126,088 at Sotheby’s in London. This proud owner of the Guarneri would be adding it to his existing collection of 15 violins. The violin has not been played in public for almost 70 years, but Viktorov assured that the instrument would now be played frequently in public.