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A stone marking a pet cat's grave fetched more than £200,000 at Sotheby's yesterday after experts said it was a 1,100-year-old Anglo-Saxon carving. The relief depicting St Peter was found in a salvage yard 20 years ago by a stonemason, Johnny Beeston, who took it back to his home in Dowlish Wake, Somerset, where he and his wife Ruth decided it would make a headstone for their cat Winkle. After Chris Brewchorne, an amateur archaeologist from the town, realised its significance as he walked past, experts identified it as probably part of a Christian cross from 900AD. Yesterday an anonymous...

LONDON - Nestled in cellars tunneled deep into a Crimean mountainside, they survived revolution, war and decades of communism. Hundreds of bottles of wine selected for the pleasure of Czar Nicholas II and preserved on the orders of Josef Stalin were auctioned by Sotheby's in London on Friday — the latest in a slew of Russian collectibles being snapped up at ever-rising prices. Several dozen Russian and European collectors gathered at Sotheby's showrooms to bid on bottles, some more than 150 years old and valued at several thousand dollars, from the imperial Massandra winery near Yalta on Ukraine's Black Sea...

PALM BEACH, Fla RESTING on a coffee table in Jose Fanjul's mansion on Jungle Road is an inscribed silver box, a gift from King Juan Carlos of Spain. Another table bears a silver-framed wedding photo of Mr. Fanjul and his bride greeting the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Elsewhere in the house, silver-rimmed photos of Mr. Fanjul and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush are displayed prominently. An Impressionist work by the Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, "Girl in the Silvery Sea," hangs in a living room corner. Mr. Fanjul opened a thick album and showed a...

Texas Documents Bring in $2.1 Million at Auction, Despite Withdrawal of Most Valuable Items T.A. Badger/Associated Press Jun 18, 2004 SAN ANTONIO (AP) - A collection of historic Texas documents brought in a much-better-than-expected $2.1 million at auction Friday - even though four items were withdrawn at the last minute for fear they had been stolen. Three documents were removed Friday from the Texas Independence sale at Sotheby's in New York amid concerns they may have been stolen years ago from Texas state archives. A fourth had been removed Thursday for the same reason. Among the withdrawn items was a...

Confederate flag sells for $40,000 at auction By Michael Lollar January 18, 2004 A Confederate flag discovered in a trunk in a Dancyville, Tenn., farmhouse sold for $40,000 Friday at auction by Sotheby's auction company in New York. One of the first Confederate flags carried into battle, the silk flag with 12 stars decorated with gold-colored sequin-like spangles, sold to a telephone buyer who declined to reveal his name. Sotheby's described him only as a "private American collector." With a 20 percent buyer's premium, the final price for the flag was $48,000. Nancy Druckman, head of Sotheby's Folk Art Department,...

MLK papers are for sale; value put at $30 million By Bartholomew Sullivan sullivan@gomemphis.com August 27, 2003 A New York auction house put the private papers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on display Tuesday and announced they'll be sold later this year. But when sold they should be carefully preserved and made available to the public, several civil rights advocates said. The material, owned by the King estate, has never been made public. Reacting to news the papers are to be sold by the Sotheby's auction house this fall, some expressed dismay but all said they are a national...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sotheby's said on Tuesday it had settled a lawsuit accusing pop superstar Michael Jackson (news) of failing to pay almost $1.4 million for two 19th century paintings he bought from the auction house last year but no longer wanted. Reuters Photo   Diana Phillips, senior vice president for the New York auction house, told Reuters that the case had been resolved amicably but the terms were not being disclosed. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleged Jackson's Los Angeles company MJJ Productions successfully bid on two paintings by French artist William Adolphe Bourgereau on...

The United States Probation Department has recommended no prison time for A. Alfred Taubman, the 78-year-old principal owner of Sotheby's who faces sentencing on Monday for his Dec. 5 conviction for fixing commission prices paid by auction clients. But the Justice Department, which prosecuted Mr. Taubman, took strong issue, arguing to the sentencing judge, George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan, that under federal guidelines Mr. Taubman deserved the maximum three-year term and a fine of at least $1.6 million to $8 million for leading a six-year antitrust conspiracy with Sotheby's rival, Christie's. The scheme, which rocked the...