Estimated at about £500 at Duke's sale in Dorchester on November 26, this Marx Merry Maker band is being sold by its original owner, who has kept it in working order for well over 70 years and can even lay his hands on the box it came in. Its four mousy characters bear a striking resemblance to a certain Disney character who was beginning to make his mark at that time, and we can take it that Uncle Walt's lawyers would be keeping a close watch on the situation if something similar arose today. Louis Marx's company was a giant toymaker in the United States – but he also had factories in nine other countries and this model was made in Dudley in the West Midlands, or Worcestershire as it was thought of then, an early product of a plant that was opened in 1931. During World War II, production there was given over to something rather more serious than daft little tin bands, and after the war Marx started up again in this country on a new industrial estate in Swansea.

You can't see very clearly the ugly mugs on the two mean looking hombres in this "Pot calling the kettle black" confrontation from about 1900, but be assured that you wouldn't want to tangle with either of them. A curious pair of spelter figures, standing 11cm tall, they have both had hard lives and that will perhaps impact on their selling price at Clevedon Salerooms' next big quarterly auction at Kenn Road on November 26. Nevertheless, they'll knock your block off if you suggest they'll go for anything less than £80-£120.

Transatlantic competition should be sky-high at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in South Cerney on November 4, when this book printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1744 is estimated perhaps conservatively at £1,000-£1,500. A translation of Cicero's Cato Major, "or his Discourse of Old-age", it is the most acclaimed typographical work by Franklin – printer by trade, scientist by genius – and also regarded as one of the earliest American fine press productions. This is the "second state" first edition, with "ony" corrected to "any" on page 27, but in a way this only adds to its lustre, since the mistake was spotted only very late in the print run.

You wouldn't want to see this old thing awaiting you on the Tarmac as you headed off to the Costas, but round about 1910 it was just about the ultimate in high-tech toys, with no maker's mark but almost certainly from Germany. In tinplate with its original paint finish, its propeller is painted card, and so quite a remarkable survivor. Auctioneer Claire Rawle puts a tentative estimate of £150-£200 on it at Tamlyn and Son's collectors' sale in Bridgwater on November 17, and is particularly taken by the pilot's black moustache. "All very macho," she says, which is not quite our impression of men with black moustaches of our acquaintance. "The plane is in amazing condition, considering its age. One of the rudders is a bit loose but it doesn't seem to have had many crash landings. I would think it was hung on a piece of string and maybe just moved about a bit when it was wound!"

Odd how there can be something vaguely unsettling about some inter-war advertising images. There's nothing specific about this smiling Twenties motorist from Belgium that gives these sensitive pages the creeps, but give us the creeps he does, and it cheers us to hear there are only perhaps three or four of him to be found anywhere in the world. That fact cheers Richard Edmonds of Chippenham Auction Rooms, too, as he expects the sign's rarity – plus the pull of the universal brand Dunlop – to send bidding up to between £3,000 and £5,000 at his big auto sale at Castle Combe Circuit a week today.

Dreweatts 1759's decorative arts and modern design sale at Newbury on Tuesday includes this pair of limed oak, steel and upholstered chairs by John Makepeace, whose school at Parnham House in Dorset has nurtured the talent of some of our finest craftsmen in wood of the post-war years. Estimate: £500-£800.

This 1986 first edition of The Light Fantastic, the second story in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series with publishers Colin Smythe, is estimated at £150-£250 at the Cotswold Auction Company's sale in Cheltenham on Tuesday. Another book lot that will be in demand, with an estimate of £600-£800, is the complete Chapman and Hall part-work series of Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, published in 16 sections to an ever-more agog band of readers from 1843 to '44.