A Lebanese property developer living in England has paid 352,411 pounds (US$509,768) for license plate number “1D”, a new record in the world of collectible British license plates.

At an auction held by the DVLA, the agency which regulates British vehicle registration, the highly-coveted plate sold for a total of 285,000 pounds, but fees and taxes added nearly 70,000 pounds to the winning bid.

The winning bidder bought the plate as a birthday present for his wife and will affix it to her Bentley. After taxes and fees, it ranks as the second most expensive plate sold after “F 1″ went for 440,625 pounds last year.

Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada will auction off some of the art that inspired his East-meets-West style, as he trades his plush Paris mansion for smaller digs on the Seine River.

The announcement came a month after the late Yves Saint-Laurent’s art collection was put up for auction by his partner Pierre Berge, a 373.5-million-euro bonanza that caused friction with China over a pair of looted bronze relics.

From Hopi Kachina dolls to bronze Buddhas, more than 1,000 pieces collected over the past two decades will be on the block at the June 16-17 sale organized by Aguttes auction house.

An 8th-century tortoiseshell vanity box, said to be a gift from the Tang Dynasty palace to Japan’s Emperor Shomu, will be auctioned in Hong Kong and may fetch more than HK$40 million ($5 million).

The octagonal box, measuring 35.6 centimeters across and embedded with mother-of-pearl and amber in shapes of flowers, is the highlight of Sotheby’s planned sale of antiques, gems and paintings on April 8.

The item had once resided at the repository of the Todaiji, or Great Eastern Temple, in the southern Japanese prefecture of Nara.

Artworks belonging to the late Gianni Versace sold at a London auction for more than twice the presale estimate, the second time in a month the public sale of a famed fashion designer’s items had defied the economic slump.

The 545-lot sale of the contents of Villa Fontanelle, Versace’s early 19th-century mansion on the shores of Lake Como, fetched 7.4 million pounds ($10.5 million) last night, against a presale top estimate of 2.8 million pounds.

Like the Saint Laurent sale, the Versace sale was a chance to pick up pieces personally selected by a man of great taste.

According to the art website Artdaily, the owner of Torpedo Comics has paid $ 317,200 at auction for the first edition of Action Comics, featuring the debut adventures of Superman.

John Dolmayan, drummer for System of a Down and owner of Torpedo Comics, is now the owner of the first edition of Action Comics, from June of 1938 which is famous for having in its pages the debut of the “Man of Steel”.

This sets a record price for a comic book, but far from the $500,000 that Comic Connect estimated it to be worth.

Toy retailer ToysRUs has paid $5.1m for the Toys.com domain name.

It is believed to be the biggest payout for a domain this year but has some way to go to beat the $14m paid for sex.com in 2007 or the $9.5m paid for porn.com.

“Toys.com is going to put them in the top search ranking and is likely to give them kudos in terms of brand recognition,” said Sedo’s business development manager Nora Nanayakkara.