Russell Wardrop has an unusual approach to Christmas shopping.

Not for him the traditional manly dash around Buchanan Galleries at 4.30pm on December 24. This year, he has treated himself to a tie and his wife Sharon to an embroidered picture. The tie cost £1600. The artwork was a snip at £400.

This neckwear is not just any old sliver of silk. It is the Saltire tie worn by Alex Salmond while signing the Referendum Agreement, at the TV ding-dong with Alistair Darling and for many other of the highlights of his First Ministership. Wardrop bagged a bargain: his budget was £10,000. He even bid against the former FM - whose wife, Moira, was furious that he had let the embroidered kitten picture go - to win the lot and wrap up Christmas shopping before 12 noon.

Welcome to Great Western Auctions in Glasgow, where yesterday a selection of the former FM's official gifts were sold for charity, making £42,000 for good causes. This was a car boot sale for political anoraks, an insight into civic gifting culture and a chance for anyone who registered for a paddle number to buy the referendum-year equivalent of a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

Piled into a small ante-room off the main sales floor, the geegaws of office looked like a cross between the Barras and a school Christmas fair, from plastic crates of books to rubber ducks. Anyone wanting to start a quaich shop could have stocked up for six months. Campbell Cameron, a former SNP councillor from Oban, observed that these were the items elected representatives carry in their suitcases to hand out abroad. "We also favoured the quaich," he said. "I must have given away hundreds of them."

Cameron had his eye on a couple of George Wyllie items. Also a Buckie mouse mat, bundled together with a framed Gaelic blessing, three framed photographs of Salmond and eight Italian etchings. These lots, buried deep in the three-hour auction, are where the detritus of office goes to die. A Versace watch. A tin of Broons fudge. A wooden-covered book about the Chinese town of Yangliuquing, with accompanying Giuseppe Castiglione-inspired mouse mat and memory stick. You don't come across one of those every day.

Salmond is the first FM to expose the contents of the Bute House spare bedroom to public scrutiny and ebullient auctioneer and TV celebrity Anita Manning, who took the hammer for the sale, was keen that as many folk as possible should have a good nosy. "It's a history of his time in office, his extensive travels, the esteem people held him in," she says. "But he can't keep everything, so to give them charity is wonderful."

All proceeds from the sale go to cancer charity CLIC Sargent, Scottish Youth Theatre and St Jerome's Orphanage in Kenya.

There were representatives from the charity flanking Salmond in the front row, marvelling as the cash racked up.

An antiques warehouse is not a politician's natural habitat but Salmond was in his element, joshing with Manning, signing souvenir catalogues (£3, also for charity) and taking off his tie before handing it over for sale. Mrs Salmond, he admitted, had a strong hand in selecting which items went into Anita's van and which were kept for their personal delight and delectation. "A few things slipped through," he admitted. "So when you see me bidding on a couple of lots, please take pity."

The Broons cartoons in which he featured were handed over with some regret. Being in the Sunday Post cartoon strip was, he told the audience from a platform temporarily borrowed from Manning, "one of the great honours of my life. In the US they put their former presidents on Mount Rushmore. Here they put them in the Broons."

A key question remains though: who spends the second Saturday before Christmas sitting on an uncomfortable chair, considering whether to bid on the model of a samurai helmet in a glass case or seven St Ninian's Day tartan ties? A wide mix of folks it seems.

MSP Joan McAlpine, one of Salmond's close confidantes, was there with her daughter Eleanor and with a few items ringed in her catalogue. A group of four chums, out on their Saturday morning bike ride, popped in for a swatch and planned to come back later to bid on a Peter Howson print and a bowl made from the Forth Bridge.

There were SNP activists, their feet only just recovered from the referendum campaign, looking for a souvenir of the most exciting year of their lives. Linda Rowan had her eye on the Broons cartoons, some of the Yes memorabilia and one of the portraits. "I would hang it in the hall to annoy my No-voting friends," she said.

Manning deliberately book-ended the Salmonalia sale with the auction house's usual fortnightly Saturday free-for-all and some of the punters were regulars who had come for the candle sticks and decided to stay for the copies of the Edinburgh Agreement. Alan Woods was searching for Christmas jewellery but found himself drawn to a set of Japanese warriors.

Tina Ng-A-Mann and Victor Clements, who described themselves as "active No voters" had driven down from Perthshire to bid for a Harris Tweed Humpty Dumpty to hang on the wall. Looking around at the two-thick crowds surveying the Japanese and Swedish whiskies and signed magazines, Clements said: "He has made this accessible. I'll give him that."

Some of the lots - a John Lowrie Morrison painting that went for £2600, a Lalique bowl that fetched £950 - were strong items that would have sold well on any Saturday afternoon. Others, such as the tie which will never be worn again, ever, but will take pride of place in the Wardrop household in Glasgow, have a significance and sentimental value that make them the Elvis jewelled jumpsuits of political memorabilia.

Speaking after the sale, Salmond said: "Over seven-and-a-half years as First Minister I was presented with many wonderful gifts - from novelty items, like soft toys or a Zulu spear, to high-value items like artwork, Cartier cufflinks or rare stamps.

"These were gifts to me as Scotland's First Minister and so, on leaving office, I am delighted that their proceeds from this Christmas auction will now benefit three great Scottish charities. I was amazed that my saltire tie alone raised a staggering £1600. Instead of packing these items away when we left Bute House, Moira and I were keen that other people be able to treasure them and raise money for charity in the process.

"There was something for everyone here today, for every pocket, and I hope those people who have bought one of these mementos will cherish and enjoy them as much we did." Yesterday's sale marked the end of an era and cleared the shelves of the FM's office in Holyrood and Bute House for a whole new generation of Chinese artefacts and commemorative plaques.

Despite being heavily outbid on that tie, SNP stalwart Chris Hearn stayed to watch the boxes of political biographies and Bahookie CDs whizz past Manning's gavel.

"Who knows," he said. "Maybe one day we will be back for the auction of Nicola Sturgeon."