In the resilient Beswick market, collectors paid high prices for some rarities – even modern prototypes – at autumn sales.

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Terence Ryle

Best of a wide-ranging 150-lot collection which totalled more than £24,000 at Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium) was a group of red Friesian cattle: a bull (1439C), a cow (1362B), and a calf (2690).

Produced for the Beswick Collectors Club in 1992, it was made in very small numbers and drew wide interest at the October 17 sale in Sherborne before selling at £3100 to a collector against an estimate of £1000-1500.

Two post-1988 Beatrix Potter figurines stood out at the Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium) three-day sale in Evesham on October 3-5.

Both 4½in (11cm) tall Beswick-Royal Albert prototypes, neither the group of Pig Wig and Pigling Bland, nor Aunt Pettitoes ‘Gravy and Potatoes’, were put into general production.

Bearing property of Royal Doulton marks, the pigs were estimated at £800- 1200 and sold at £4200 while Aunt Pettitoes, pitched at £400-600, took £2400.