SNOW, or the threat of it, makes auctioneers nervous. Will the buyers, the dealers especially, dare to travel? Should one cancel? In my experience, bad weather often has a perverse effect in that people, horrified that a rival will have the field to themselves, risk life and limb to make it to the sale.

Boulton Cooper need not have worried. Their recent antiques sale at Malton was warmly received and prices were reasonably hot considering the current chilly economic climate.

In the ceramics, a pair of Burmantofts spoon warmers stirred up a tasty £260. "Miss Demure", a Royal Doulton figure, seduced £100. Less demure, and currently rather eclipsed by the anything goes internet, were two 1984 Pirelli calendars. There was a time not so long ago when these made for headline interest among the sports car-loving men who paid inflated money for them, and brought down upon their heads the fury of feminists.

These days, Angie, Suzi-Anne etc, with sand and rubber, brought but a limp bid of £25. More tasteful figures, musicians in coal-painted bronze, did ever so well to the tune of £530. A fine early twentieth century bronze of a "partially clad woman seated on a stallion" by H Guradze of Berlin rode to an expected £1,200.

In the pictures section, a seasonally winter landscape by George Augustus Williams perhaps convinced a buyer that it was colder somewhere else and dug out double its estimate to make £2,700, and similarly late nineteenth century watercolours of York by Tom Dudley did well to realise £1,400.

There was a good selection of books. A Dictionary for Midwives by Culpeper, published in 1681, delivered a bid of £140, despite the auctioneers having issue with the quality of its spine re-backing. Various books on swords, some gruesome, thrust to £90.

Of swords in the steel, there were enough to arm a platoon. Most expensive were horribly-pointed rapier types, for example two mid-seventeenth century "town swords" lunged to £170 and £220 apiece. One was engraved "Ne me tire pas sans raison" which translates as "Do not draw me without reason", which was reassuring.

Those wishing to slice rather than stab could have had an 1803 infantry officer's sword with a curved blade for £195.

The price of furniture was steady rather than exciting. This is the way these days. Boulton and Cooper auctioneer Andrew Macmillan pointed out that the lack of Americans had undermined the export market.

At home, the fashion for minimalism and the cult of Ikea has weakened the home market. However, this means that a buyer who wants decent furniture for their house is in a very strong position.

In a recent letter, published in the Antiques Trade Gazette, John Andrews of the Antique Collectors' Club analysed authoritative records and concluded that "antique furniture outperformed stocks, shares and housing over some 33 years starting in 1968, but not over the last ten".