Red and yellow and pink and green . . .remember the kindergarten song "I Can Sing a Rainbow"? Melbourne auctioneer Leonard Joel has rounded up a cavalcade of rainbow-hued radios which it will offer on Sunday, March 21, and there are plenty of eye-catching examples to brighten any vintage radio collector's day or lend sparkle to an otherwise bland lounge-room.

Everyone in the auction world loves a “sleeper” - an item tagged with a modest estimate that astonishes everyone by selling for a motza. Many such items are from the exotic East - and everyone knows valuing oriental wares is an arcane art.

The late Dorothy Sheey matched a lifelong love of antiques and collectibles with an old fashioned caring attitude to nursing the sick that would have done Florence Nightingale proud.  Born in 1895, Dorothy was orphaned early in life and raised by the Cottrell family in Hay, New South Wales. It was here she first fell in love with antiquities – the family (who dealt in furniture) constantly bringing beautiful pieces to the home.

Art+Object Auckland will auction on Saturday the estate of one of New Zealand’s most intriguing collectors. Pat Newman (1918-2009) clearly had a wide range of interests. Ross Millar from A+O said “Newman’s collection is extraordinary in its breadth, unusual, to say the least, but with a strong mechanical and manufacturing theme. The essence of the man is that he would rather build it than buy it. We have less and less characters like him around today.”