At the auction sale of Sterndale Bennett's library in 1875, Thomas Taphouse paid £52 for the autograph manuscript of Fingal's Cave Overture. Two months earlier, at another auction, the publisher John Williams paid £990 for the plates and copyrights of Charles Coote's Prince Imperial Galop, a music-hall favourite (done – it was reported – to the applause of those in attendance). This essay will not attempt to account for such seemingly irreconcilable events and values – the market-place was always alive with such contrasts – but will, instead, focus attention on the auctioneer at both of those sales, the London firm of Puttick & Simpson, sketching its history from 1846 to 1971, describing its music sales, and demonstrating the singular importance, today, of its surviving catalogues. It will, it is hoped, persuade others to consider different and more painstaking studies of those relics than have been undertaken to this point.