$122,000 
At a Bonhams auction of maritime paintings and shipbuilders’ models in April in New York, the highest-priced item was a circa 1925 cutaway model of the RMS Ascania. The Cunard passenger liner made its maiden voyage in 1925, from London to Montreal, and continued to travel between those two cities until the beginning of World War II, when it was first converted into an armed merchant ship and then used to transport British troops. It took part in the invasion of Sicily and the landing at Anzio in 1943. After the war, Ascania returned to passenger service until the mid-1950s. It was scrapped in 1957. Just prior to being broken up, the ship carried British troops to the eastern Mediterranean during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956.

$506,000
A Curtiss MF Seagull hydroaeroplane designed in 1917 was among the highlights of a Bonhams auction in New York in April that featured items related to the history of flight and space exploration. According to Bonhams, the sale marked the first time that a vintage aircraft has been auctioned in Manhattan.

This plane’s predecessor—the F-boat (F for flying)—was designed by Glenn Curtiss, a onetime rival of Orville and Wilbur Wright, who, following a 10-year legal battle over patent infringements, formed a partnership with the Wright brothers’ business.

Curtiss didn’t invent the seaplane, but his circa 1912 design for the F-boat was considered the best of its era. He produced hundreds of these aircraft, initially selling more in Europe and Japan than in the United States. During World War I, the U.S. Navy had a fleet of F-boats that it used almost entirely for training pilots. In 1917, Curtiss designed an improved, more stable F-boat, which was dubbed the MF (M for modernized). The company delivered about two dozen MF models to the Navy prior to the Armistice signing. Then from 1919 through 1920, the Navy had 80 more MFs built for pilot training.

Most of these aircraft eventually were sold as surplus. The Curtiss company converted many of them for civilian use by equipping them with more powerful engines and additional passenger seating. These planes became known as MF Seagulls.

The Seagull that sold at the Bonhams auction was built in Philadelphia after the war and sold as surplus in 1923 or ’24. It appears to have had a single proprietor, William Long, who owned and operated an airport in Lorain, Ohio. Long is said to have based the MF at Ohio’s Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie and used it for sightseeing flights at the nearby Cedar Point Amusement Park. In the 1940s, Long donated the plane to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, which consigned it to Bonhams for this sale.

$45,750
Also during Bonhams’ history of flight and space exploration auction, the Apollo 13 emergency checklist sold—40 years to the day after the spacecraft experienced an oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon, prompting crew member Jack Swigert to radio a message to Mission Control (and commander James Lovell to repeat that message): "Houston, we’ve had a problem." The explosion left the crew in danger of running out of oxygen and power before they could return to Earth. The crew used and marked the checklist after the explosion, which occurred on April 13, 1970, two days after the launch and four days before the crew’s safe landing in the Pacific Ocean.

$17,925

Apparently the bidding went on and on and on for the original animatronic Energizer Bunny during a Heritage Auctions sale in April. This toy, which was created by Academy Award–nominated special effects artist Eric Allard and his company All Effects, and other identical models have appeared in more than 100 television commercials since debuting in 1989.

$297,000
During Barrett-Jackson’s eighth annual Palm Beach Collector Car Auction in April, the highest bid was for the first example of the 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon Special Edition. The car has an LS7 Z06 engine, a ZR1 chassis, and numerous other lightweight, carbon fiber features. Chevrolet will produce only 500 models. With the car came the chance to view the construction of its LS7 engine at GM’s Wixom Performance Build Center and the option to take delivery at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky.

A 2005 Ford Mustang GT Platt & Payne Signature Edition drew a bid of $190,000, which was donated to the Darrell Gwynn Foundation, a Florida-based organization dedicated to preventing and curing spinal cord injuries and to providing equipment and services to people who have suffered these injuries. This supercharged Mustang was built to honor two drag racing legends, Hubert Platt and Randy Payne, both of whom are in the National Hot Rod Association Hall of Fame.

A one-of-a-kind Boyd Coddington AC Cobra, built by Hot Rods by Boyd in the late 1980s, sold for $184,800. Building the car to the owner’s specifications took more than five years and cost about $300,000. The car features an original 1965 AC Cobra body, imported from England, and a custom frame built by Boyd.

$254,500
A one-of-a-kind, circa 1815 musical watch by Piguet & Meylan, called Allegory of Spring, took the top bid at a Sotheby’s watch auction in April in New York. The watch, which was made for the Chinese market, features a portrait of a woman, done in enamel, on its dial. A Swiss museum purchased the watch.

Also during the sale, a Patek Philippe reference 3450, an automatic perpetual calendar watch with moon phases and a leap year indicator, sold for $188,500. Patek Philippe made only 244 examples of this watch during its production run, from 1981 to 1985. This watch belongs to the first series of the reference, in which the leap year indicator has Arabic numerals and a red dot. The second series, introduced in the second year of production, features Roman numerals for every year, including the leap year.

According to Sotheby’s research, only 10 examples of Ref. 3450 with the red-dot indicator have come to the market. Of those watches, the piece that sold at the April auction is the only one inscribed with "Beyer," the name of the retailer that sold it. Based in Zurich, Beyer Chronometrie has sold Patek Philippe watches since 1842, longer than any other retailer.

$81,450
At a Sotheby’s wine sale in April in London, a pristine-condition, 12-bottle case of 1988 Romanée Conti drew the highest bid (52,900 pounds). The Wine Advocate has rated the wine as high as 97 on its 100-point scale and noted that it is just now maturing.

Another highlight of the sale was a lot containing five magnums of 1959 Château Mouton Rothschild. It sold for $30,101 (19,550 pounds). After tasting the wine two years ago, Serena Sutcliffe, the head of Sotheby’s wine department, described the Mouton Rothschild as "an absolute knockout…a wine for hedonists!"

$165,900
The top draw at a Skinner musical instrument sale in April in Boston was an Italian violin made in 1734 in Venice by Pietro Guarneri. The instrument, which was restored in 1900, still bears its original label identifying its maker. The violin had a presale estimate price of $30,000 to $50,000.

The sale also featured American-made acoustic and electric guitars. The highest-priced electric guitar was a 1958 Fender Stratocaster with all of its original parts. It sold for $16,590. A 1946 C.F. Martin & Co. Nazareth fetched $7,999.

$31,250
A wrought iron and velvet music stand garnered the highest price at a Doyle New York art and design auction in April. The piece, made sometime between 1925 and 1930 by American Art Deco artist William Hunt Diederich (1884–1953), stands nearly four feet tall. The stand’s hounds-and-hare motif is a recurring theme in Diederich’s work; it also appears in a fire screen, a weather vane, and a chandelier that he made.

The auction also featured the sale of a circa 1970 painting by American abstract expressionist Norman Bluhm (1921–1999). The painting, titled Camenae II, sold for $17,500. Shortly before Bluhm died, Art in America editor Raphael Rubinstein predicted that his body of work would be as important to the 21st century as Cézanne’s later output was to the 20th.

$46,360
A 12-bottle case of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild Pauillac earned the highest bid at an Acker Merrall & Condit sale in April at Cru restaurant in New York. Last year, while giving the wine a rating of 97 on his 100-point scale, Robert Parker described the 1982 Lafite as "offering up an extraordinary nose of caramelized herbs, smoke, cedar, pen ink, black currants, and earth. The gorgeous aromatics are followed by a full-bodied, plump, rich, fleshy wine with low acidity." Parker also noted that "With six to eight hours decanting in a closed decanter, it will offer beautiful drinking, but it needs another five to eight years to reach full maturity. It is capable of lasting 50 to 60 years."

$986,500
At a Sotheby’s sale in April in New York, a painting by neo-romanticist Pavel Tchelitchew (1898–1957), Portrait of Ruth Ford, fetched a record-setting auction price for the artist’s work. The painting drew a bid that was more than $400,000 greater than the previous record price for one of his paintings. Sotheby’s will offer a companion portrait of Ruth’s brother and Tchelitchew’s longtime partner, the writer Charles Henri Ford, at an auction in November.

$3.78 million
At a Christie’s jewelry auction in April in New York, the highest bid was for a diamond pendent necklace featuring a 28.28-carat, heart-shaped, internally flawless stone. The sale’s other highlights were historic lots that once belonged to European royalty: the 39.55-carat Emperor Maximilian Diamond, which sold for $1.76 million, and an emerald brooch that belonged to Catherine the Great, which fetched $1.65 million.

Maximilian, a member of Austria’s ruling Habsburg family, acquired the diamond in 1860, when he journeyed to Brazil on a botanical expedition. At the time, the stone weighed 41.94 carats. In 1864, at the behest of—and with the military support of—France’s Napoléon III, who wanted to establish a European monarchy in Latin America to keep the United States’ power in check and to promote France’s economic and political interests, Maximilian became emperor of Mexico.

However, in 1866, under pressure from the United States, Napoléon withdrew French troops from Mexico and abandoned Maximilian. Mexican republicans quickly defeated the emperor’s troops, captured Maximilian, and sentenced him to death. In 1867, at age 35, he was executed by a firing squad. Legend holds that Maximilian was wearing the Emperor Maximilian Diamond in a small satchel tied around his neck when he died. Following the execution, his remains were sent to Vienna and the Emperor Maximilian Diamond was given to his wife, Princess Charlotte, who had returned to Europe before the coup.

Charlotte’s family eventually sold the diamond, and it disappeared until 1919, when Chicago gem dealer Ferdinand Holtz purchased it. Holtz kept the stone until his death, in 1946, when it was sold to an unnamed private collector in New York. The diamond, which the new owner had mounted on a ring by Cartier, remained in her possession until 1982, when London jeweler Laurence Graff acquired it for $726,000 at a Christie’s auction. A year later, Graff sold the diamond to Imelda Marcos, the first lady of the Philippines. In the 1990s, the diamond was sold again, recut to its current weight of 39.55 carats, and then purchased by the owner who consigned it to Christie’s for this sale.

The Catherine the Great emerald brooch that sold at the Christie’s auction features a 60- to 70-carat hexagonal-cut emerald. The brooch was among the many opulent jewelry pieces that Catherine wore as a symbol of her power.

She ruled the Russian empire from 1762—when she seized the throne from her husband, Peter III (who was then assassinated by her guards)—until her death, in 1796.

In 1776, Catherine gave the brooch as a wedding gift to Sophie Dorothea, a princess from the Württemberg dynasty and the future Empress Maria Feodorovna, on the occasion of her marriage to Catherine’s son and successor, Paul I. The brooch was inherited by Maria’s daughter, then her granddaughter, and then passed to the Prussian house of Hohenzollern, where it remained until 1959, when Prince Friedrich Leopold died and Baron Fritz Cerrini, his private secretary, inherited the prince’s entire fortune, including the brooch.

The American collector who consigned the brooch to Christie’s for this sale acquired it in 1972.