Bidders from all over the world contended the choicest of the lots at Clevedon Salerooms' big quarterly specialist sale at Kenn Road this month, making for a happy day for Marc Burridge and his team.

Top lot of the day was this chequered Regency tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl tea caddy, by no means a giant at 14.5cm wide. It was estimated at £1,200-£1,800, and there was quite a frisson around the room when it sold for £6,480.

This result and others seemed to bear out the findings of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors' latest quarterly art market survey, which showed increasing optimism among members.

An incomplete set of 19th-century ivory chess pieces – a rather game-spoiling nine of them were missing – left onlookers agog once again as a Dutch bidder paid £4,800 to put all his rivals in check.

A George III circular mahogany-cased fusee wall clock by Thomas Shrosbee of London sold for £3,600 against its top estimate of £1,500. And perhaps less surprising was the £2,520 paid by a telephone bidder for a set of the Beatles' autographs, signed when they visited Weston-super-Mare in their breakthrough summer of 1963.

And that despite the fact that the page had also been inscribed by Tommy Quickly, a fellow Scouser on the bill who enjoyed a rather less illustrious career than the Fab Four.