It was one of the top Melitensia collections held in private hands and the auction of the scholar Albert Ganado’s maps and books was keenly anticipated.

But when the auctioneer’s gavel fell last month, the government purchased most of the items, to the disappointment of private collectors and the benefit of the country.

While the highest bid usually secures the price, the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage exercised its ‘Right of Preference’ power to make way for the government to purchase items considered of intrinsic national value.

These included an Antonio Saliba map, the only one of its type existing in the world today. It is a broadsheet map, meaning that it does not originate from books.

Another map the government agency purchased was a rare Pietro Paolo Palumbo misshaped map of Malta, based on three Lafreri siege maps.

In all, the agency spent about €50,000 on the items at the auction run by Obelisk Auctions.

Ganado, 98, a pioneer in the field of cartography, recently decided to sell part of his world-class collection, which he amassed over the span of 60 years.

Artefacts that enrich the country’s cultural legacy are often hidden in these private collections.

It is not the first time the government has exercised its rights under article 55 of the Cultural Heritage Act. In 2014, Heritage Malta acquired, from the same auction house, sculptor Antonio Sciortino’s Speed for the national collection for the price of €163,000.

The public can now admire the masterpiece at MUŻA.

Similarly, the cartographical museum pieces will now be housed at the National Library (the Bibliotheca) in Valletta, among other venues, where they can be studied and referenced by collectors, scholars and students.

Joseph Schirò, one of Malta’s foremost experts in this very specialised field, would have loved to add some of these to his own collection, but he acknowledges that the nation takes priority in such cases.

“Although bidders do not like to have the books and other items which they had bid on being acquired by national entities using the pre-emption clause in the law, the consoling factor is that the same items will be available for study by all for present and future generations,” he admits.

The superintendence takes first dips by equalling the highest bid and then takes ownership of the piece.

The Ganado collection is vast both in quantity and quality. In fact, in 2008, the collector had relinquished part of it as a barter with the Maltese government to gain ownership of a Valletta property that served as his family home and that was leased to him by the government. Four-hundred-and-fifty maps, most of them single exemplars and therefore priceless, entered the national collection.

Schirò, on behalf of HM, was then tasked with overseeing this deal. He is adamant that the country came out on top, as the value and rarity of the pieces exceed many times over the real-estate value of the property.

Pierre Grech Pillow of Obelisk Auction House says that other tranches of the Ganado collection of Melitensia will be on auction later this year and, maybe, even next year. This will provide collectors with another opportunity to acquire important pieces in the hope that they won’t be once again disappointed by the pre-emptory action of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.