This table centrepiece, or epergne, with carnival glass bowls in an unusual dark purple, has an estimate of £150-£250 at Tamlyn and Son's antiques sale on December 8, mainly because it bears the proud WMF stamp on its base. Proud? Many of us remember a time when early 20th-century German Metallwarenfabrik products sold for next to nothing, such was the low demand for base metal and pewter, but their flamboyant Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau, designs have won through to overcome that prejudice. WMF are still around, making three-quarters of a billion euros or so every year with their kitchen machinery, tableware and pots and pans. A tip: just don't phone their HQ in Geislingen an der Steige and say "Excuse me, do you still do those nice epergnes with the carnival glass bowls?"

There was an old joke back in the Fifties about an upwardly-mobile-minded gal who married a man with a uniform and money, only to discover he was a bus conductor. It wasn't quite what she had in mind, but still, the job was one that everyone knew and recognised, and alongside the cowboy and Indian outfits in the shops at this time of year, you could always find a kit that turned you into the man off the 73 to Heaton Park; the clips of tickets were the main attraction, along with the machine that dinged and punched a hole in them. The set seen here, on offer at Chippenham Auction Rooms this morning, has all its constituent parts intact – along with a good few extra real-life tickets from London Transport Country Buses. Ding-dong!

The Warwick Vase, an ancient Roman marble vessel adorned with various faces of Bacchus, was discovered at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli in about 1771 and became a sensation some years later when it passed into the hands of the second Earl of Warwick. A classic Grand Tour icon, its shape was endlessly copied, with a greater or lesser degree of accuracy, after the sculptor William Theed was given belated permission by the peer to cast it in silver, and this version in bronze pays humble homage to that. Estimated at £200-£300, it is on offer at Wessex Auction Rooms' sale near Chippenham on Thursday.

A number of lots from a country estate catch the eye at McCubbing and Redfern's antiques and collectables sale in Wells on Wednesday, including this ebonised bracket clock c1710 by Andrew Dunlop, a London member of the Clockmakers Company in the first three decades of the 18th century. Known more for longcase clocks and watches, Dunlop was much influenced by Thomas Tompion – to such an extent that this clock is virtually a copy of one of the master's designs. Whichever way you look at it, it's an important early English timepiece in good working order, and an estimate of £5,000-£8,000 does not seem out of order.

An estimate of £10,000-£15,000 rides on this "Johnnie of Maiwand" Afghan medal group that goes under the Charterhouse hammer at their two-day auction of collectors' items, clocks and antiques in Sherborne on December 15 and 16. Major General Sir John Slade earned his nickname through his part in the second Afghan War Battle of Maiwand in July 1880. It was a major military disaster, with nearly 1,000 lost out of 2,500 British and Indian troops, who were overwhelmed by some 12,000 Afghans, who suffered even heavier losses. But many medals were awarded for heroism that day, including several Victoria Crosses and Distinguished Conduct Medals. The CB went to Captain Slade, an archive of whose letters, documents and other pieces of ephemera is also in the lot. Charterhouse has performed exceptionally with medals in recent times, with the Tom Collins Falklands Military Medal group going for £40,000, and Leslie Owen Fox's 1939-45 George Cross group making £20,000.

Three distinctly Thirties tiles by Edward Bawden, rescued from the Poole Pottery tea rooms when the original building was demolished in 2000, are offered at Woolley and Wallis's British art pottery auction in Salisbury on Wednesday. Made by Carter and Co, they were among a large number of tiles dispersed at a selling exhibition in 2002, and this time their estimate is £100-£300. That figure could rise, however, since there's something about them that speaks appealingly of both Poole's maritime tradition and the Art Deco movement in which the pottery played a significant role.

The next Dreweatts 1759 Bristol jewellery and silver sale at Apsley Road, Clifton, on December 8, will include this substantial bracelet, with its swivelling mounts set with five George V sovereigns. It carries an estimate of £900 to £1,200 in a busy pre-Christmas sale that also includes coins, objects of vertu and watches.