A 2ft 8in court rapier said to have belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie, but was never used as a weapon was sold yesterday at the Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull. It has been part of a collection of armour at Crosby Lodge in Carlisle and was expected to fetch between £5,000 and £7,000. The hammer went down at £19,000. Colin Fraser, silver specialist at Lyon and Turnbull, said: "Charles always considered himself royalty, so this is a royal sword in a sense and is of wonderful quality. The Jacobite period and Charles Edward Stuart are both very collectable figures. The sword displays the Royal Cypher and other symbols in gilt to the blade and shows Charles's opinion of being the rightful heir to the Scottish throne."
According to French Police thieves are stealing Second world war memorabilia to order; there’s a growing international market that is causing some small museums in France to have to deal with this threat. One recent incident included a rare German "Enigma" encoding machine which investigators suspect was stolen to order. Interestingly it is usually German military collectables that are stolen as they command the highest prices. According to Michel Brissart, who runs the Omaha D-Day museum at Vierville-sur-Mer. "It all ends up going abroad: the US, the Emirates, Russia, Australia. Here in France we are too poor to keep it."
It was from Brissart's museum that earlier this year thieves took daggers, uniform caps and firearms - as well as the Enigma machine valued at £120,000. Police have subsequently returned the Enigma machine bur six items are still missing. Stealing to order is nothing new in the world of fine art and antiques and as there is a reducing supply of some types of items and some people, obsessed with their ‘hobby’, it becomes the only way to get their hands on things. A sad but true fact of life.
