Auctions

THE model of the evil Mekon used by Frank Hampson when drawing Eagle's Dan Dare comic strip is estimated pounds 700- pounds 900 in Christie's South Kensington's sale of comics, ephemera and postcards, Thursday (10.30am). It was made in 1977 according to instructions by Hampson. He was also the original artist of the Dan Dare character who was pitted against the Mekon's intergalactic cunning. The figure's maker, Terry Reed, used clay on a metal armature for the body, arms and legs and fibreglass for the head. A clay model for the head is est pounds 500- pounds 700.

This first British sale to feature comics, as distinct from comic artwork, restricts itself to early runs and single issues, especially No 1s. Frank Hampson cover pages in colour are estimated at pounds 300- pounds 400. A 'very good, restored' issue No 1 of Superman, 1939, is est pounds 8,000- pounds 10,000.

The highest estimate is on the 27th issue of Detective Comics of May 1939, in which Batman makes his debut: pounds 30,000- pounds 40,000. Only 100 examples are known to exist. The wartime paper shortage saw to that.

The sale also has postcards (lot 346: 465 film stars, pounds 200- pounds 300), including 21 lots of Louis Wain cats averaging pounds 25 each. There are a couple of dozen scrapbooks, about pounds 150- pounds 300, and 14 books containing those chromolithographic stick-on scraps of animals, birds and people that unaccountably gripped the attention of our grandfathers on rainy Sundays: pounds 120- pounds 300.

More end-of-season eccentricities in Bonhams' sporting sale, Tuesday (10.30am). A pair of sculptures of the late Bobby Moore and his wife, Tina, which flanked the front door of the footballer's home in Chigwell, Essex, is est pounds 100- pounds 200.

In the same sale, 11 pairs of boxing gloves collected by Roland Dakin, who refereed more than 40 world title fights, are each estimated pounds 200- pounds 300. The wearers include Muhammad Ali, Henry Cooper, Rocky Marciano, Joe Bugner and Frank Bruno, who contributed the gloves he used to knock out Larry Frazier in the second round at the Royal Albert Hall in 1985.