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It's hard to buy a live tortoise these days, but if it's an ex-tortoise you're after, it would be hard to do better than this chap, who is offered at Clevedon Salerooms' big quarterly sale on June 18 with an estimate of around £100. Measuring 31cm from head to tail, he comes with a letter from Victorian times stating: "When alive, this tortoise belonged to Mr Richardson, a well-known showman of his day, who lived opposite Keynsham Church at premises now comprising the sites of numbers 6,8 & 10 High Street. The tortoise travelled around the Country with the Show and when it died Mr Richardson had the shell mounted as seen here. The Picture of St James Fair, Bristol shows Richardson's theatre." The picture referred to is Samuel Colman's painting of 1824, St James Fair, Bristol, now owned by Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery; it's a lively scene, but sadly there's not a tortoise in sight.

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Dreweatts 1759 Bristol's sale at Apsley Road on Tuesday includes this mid 19th-century Grodnertal pedlar doll, which measures 13.5cm high and carries, as well as a basketful of haberdashery, an estimate of £200 to £250. She comes from Gröden Tal, a remote valley on the Austrian-Italian border, which has been famous for wood carving since 1643, and was particularly noted for its dolls around 150 years ago; they were sold door-to-door across Europe, from Lisbon to Russia, which probably explains why so many of them were dressed as pedlars. Not surprisingly, as demand grew, mass production set in and quality plummeted, to the extent that dolls sold around Gröden Tal today are reviled by the locals as cheap souvenirs. These days, serious carvers in this region – which is also known as Groden Valley, Val Gardena or South Tyrol – devote their skills to religious sculptures.

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Pop pickers in Devizes can listen to Brian Matthew's Sounds of the Sixties this morning and still get along to Henry Aldridge and Son's salerooms in time to bid for this Beatles Magazine from October 1965, when it would have put them back two bob or so. Some time or other in the 15 years he still had to live, John Lennon scrawled his signature across the front of it – which means two bob be blowed, you could be looking at a £1,000 lot here.

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In these hard times, you could do worse than invest maybe £40 or £60 in this splendid collection of World War II booklets, all of them packed with money-saving recipes and tips. You will find them at Tamlyn's collectors' sale on Tuesday, so after a hearty breakfast of powdered egg and whale meat, jump on that bike of yours and get pedalling along to Bridgwater.

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It's here at last, Simon Chorley's dispersal of the contents of the extraordinary Shambles museum of Victorian shops, which is to be held on site at Church Street, Newent in north-west Gloucestershire between Monday and Thursday this coming week. It all adds up to more than 2,000 lots, dominated by paraphernalia associated with some 40 shops, businesses or professions, plus specialist sections on everything from ceramics to coins, tomes to taxidermy. Here we see the ironmonger's shop, though he seems to have branched out into more general hardware. Three marmalade cutters might cost £35, a pair of churchwarden's grips for removing rabid dogs from the church, £50, while Simon Chorley says the ironmonger himself, complete in his natty bowler, could probably be anybody's for between £200 and £300.

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Pre-sale interest has led McCubbing and Redfern to think this 1932 600cc Sunbeam Lion model 7 will vroom away to glory at their collectables and general sale in Yeovil this morning. With its original registration plate, buff log book – and ride-it-away running order – it is the star of a number of vintage motorcyles on offer.

PIC 7

Dominic Winter's children's sale on June 18 includes this intriguing 19th-century panorama, all of seven feet long. A Trip to Paris by Johnny Bull & Jacky Dandy, sold by Payne and Son in 1819, is a fascinating glimpse of the French capital before it was adorned by many of the landmarks we associate with it today, and there will doubtless be keen cross-Channel interest of the kind that could make its estimate of £300 to £500 look modest.