The market for sporting memorabilia is one of the most diverse
areas of the antiques market. This is not just because the range of
sports covered - from boxing to bowls - but also due to the vast
spread of objects - from fishing tackle to football trophies.
Almost every pastime you can think of is represented in the
memorabilia market and numerous sectors of the antiques industry
have their own sporting sub-sector: silver, ceramics, paintings,
works of art and books, to name but a few.
The items that command the most attention are those that relate
to either the early history of a particular sport, or an iconic
player, special match or competition.
The field is so vast that most collectors focus on one area.
There are those who collect all memorabilia relating to their
chosen sport, but there are also people who collect items only
relating to their favourite team. Others favour particular items
like match programmes or cigarette cards.
Most buying is based on an emotional connection to the sport
(many serious collectors are also serious fans) but some elements
of the market are based on decorative appeal. The former may well
include people who pay out for pieces of sporting equipment - a
football shirt worn by a club legend or a cricket ball used to hit
the winning runs in a famous Ashes series - while the latter could
involve items with serious wall-power such as a carved wood fishing
trophy or an Olympic poster.
The sporting sector offers something for collectors on all
budgets. There are plenty of affordable areas, including
autographs, ticket stubs and photos, where prices start at just a
few pounds.
Ceramics on a sporting theme can also be a low-cost option for
new collectors, but at the same time it is remarkable how a golfer,
cricketer or footballer can turn an otherwise ordinary
19th century object into something infinitely more
desirable.
At the very height of the market, the auction record for a piece
of sporting memorabilia was set at Sotheby's New York in December
2010 when the original copy of the rules of basketball sold for a
premium-inclusive $4.3m (£2.91m).
Above: three 'point of sale' figures that sold at Bonhams
Chester in January 2005. From left to right: Dunlop Man, in almost
mint condition, that made £900; the rare Silver King Man, c.1930,
took £6600; and the original early 1940s version of
the Bromford Man made £750.
The market itself dates back to the days when sport began to
develop from a pastime into a form of organised competition. The
collecting culture first revolved around gentlemen enthusiasts
whose interests tended to focus on traditional sports such as
hunting, angling, racing, golf, cricket and tennis.
Golf societies, for instance, began to spring up in the 19th
century and they soon started to form their own collections of
classic clubs. In 1866 the Union Club House in St Andrews put its
collection on permanent display and by 1901 the market had evolved
to the point where a large international exhibition of golf
memorabilia was held in Glasgow.
As time has gone on, more and more sports have emerged with
well-supported memorabilia markets. The relatively new game of
baseball dominates the market in the United States. In Europe,
during the second half of the 20th century, football and
rugby developed into strong collecting areas, to the extent that
they are now challenging - and in the case of football exceeding -
the more established sectors in terms of their market share.
As with most other sectors of the antiques market, the pitch
seems unduly tilted with the top-end items running away in terms of
commanding high prices but the middle- and lower-end finding the
ground heavy going.
At auctions, the items which generate the most bidding tend to
be distinctive in some way, and high-profile consignments with
famous associations can sometimes draw press attention that takes
prices to truly extraordinary levels.
Collectors know that the best way to ensure that their purchases
hold their value or appreciate, is to buy quality, and the current
economic downturn has only served to increase this selectivity.
However, supported by an eclectic body of specialist dealers,
auctioneers and collectors, the sporting memorabilia market has
proved adaptable. In recent times the internet has broadened the
scope of the marketplace significantly and encouraged a healthy new
following to enter the sector.
Golf
Perhaps the sport which best demonstrates the selectivity that
exists in the market is golf.
The 1980s and 1990s were something of a boom-time for golfiana,
with American and Japanese buyers, as well as specialist collecting
societies, underpinning the market. However, things have now
changed and the collecting societies, such as Spain's Valderrama
Golf Club, are no longer the visible force in the saleroom that
they once were. After the Japanese economy began to falter in the
late 90s and the body of ageing American collectors started to
dwindle, the whole market contracted and buyers are now
significantly more selective in their purchases.
For instance, a decade ago, standard early 20th century
hickory-shafted golf clubs were the dependable stalwart of the
saleroom, selling in sets for the equivalent of £20 to £30 each.
These clubs are now fetching between £8 and £12 each, and the
number of clubs that find buyers at auction is significantly
lower.
The same is true of the early balls - the pre-1850 feather balls
or 'featheries' and the first gutta percha balls made in a myriad
of different patent designs. Vendors of balls that could often
command five-figure sums in the 1990s are now having to settle for
four-figure returns instead.
However, the flip-side of this means that, for buyers,
especially new collectors, there are now plenty of relative
bargains to be had.
There are also hopes that China's developing enthusiasm for the
sport will yield to a market resurgence in the future - something
indicated by the sale of 7000 hickory-shafted golf clubs to a
Chinese businessman in April 2009 in a single sale made by an
Edinburgh dealer (click here for full story).
Either way, when the right lots come up, the old school
collectors, including the big American buyers, will still emerge.
For instance, despite the rather patchy performance of Sotheby's
sale of the Jeffery B. Ellis collection in New York in September
2007, the overall $2.17m total was a record for a golf-memorabilia
auction and the premium-inclusive $181,000 (£93,780) paid for an
18th century long-nosed putter stamped 'A.D.',
purportedly for Andrew Dickson (the first club maker to mark his
clubs of which only four examples are known), was an auction record
for any golf club.
Above: a bent neck putter from c.1890s used by Willie Park
Junior. The club, with its longer than standard 4.5in hosel, was
the kind used by Park in numerous Opens, including when he was
runner-up in 1898. With a label written and signed by the
club-maker Ben Sayers Junior, it sold for £3300 at Bonhams Chester
in June 2010.
Football
In the UK domestic market for sporting memorabilia, football is
the sport that currently delivers the most supply, both in terms of
the number of items and their overall value, and the most
demand.
Some areas of the football market, particularly the programmes
and medals, have been collected for a long time, but others such as
shirts, boots and signed photographs have only moved to the
forefront of the sporting memorabilia market over the last decade.
Traditionally, the club with the biggest collecting following is
Manchester United, which is then followed by the London clubs with
the largest fan base - Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea.
The supply is helped by players from a previous generation
selling their personal collections. There has been a healthy crop
in recent years, including the much-publicised sale of the
collection of Manchester United legend Nobby Stiles at Convery
Auctions' sale in Edinburgh in October 2010.
The top lot was Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal, which
overshot its £100,000-150,000 estimate and was bought by Manchester
United's club museum at £160,000. The price was the highest for a
'66 medal sold as a single lot at auction - eclipsing the £140,000
seen for Alan Ball's medal sold at Christie's South Kensington in
May 2005.
Pre-1900 FA Cup and international material remains the most
sought after area in football programmes. They continue to see a
good take-up.
In November 2010, Graham Budd Auctions (in association with
Sotheby's) offered what was believed to be the earliest programme
for an England home international match, a game against Ireland on
March 2, 1889 held in Liverpool which England won 6-1. Estimated at
£6000-8000, it was knocked down at £8400.
The same auctioneer also holds the current record for a football
programme - £19,000 for the single sheet from the 1889 FA Cup final
held at The Oval, Kennington between Preston North End and
Wolverhampton Wanderers - click here for full story.
Angling
Angling collectors typically focus upon the tools of the trade,
related literature and prize catches cased by a taxidermist or
carved in wood. The market is truly international (American tackle
is a field on its own) but some makers, particularly the famous
Hardy firm in Alnwick, have assumed iconic status. Collectors
seeking, for example, to collect the numerous variants of the Hardy
brass Perfect trout reel, require great technical knowledge and
deep pockets to match.
A market movement in more recent years has been the growing
interest, in the UK at least, in the coarse fishing reels produced
by manufacturers located in Redditch, just south of Birmingham,
including Allcock, Partridge, Wilkins, Milward's, Lee, Martinez
& Bird and J.W. Young.
Lures, gaffs, nets, tied flies, fly 'reservoirs', creels and (to
a lesser extent rods, which are often more difficult to display)
add to the collecting variety.
Cricket
Like fishing antiques, cricketing memorabilia has a long
collecting history and enjoys a broad collecting base in both the
home market and in the other cricket-playing nations.
The rare survivors from the early history of the game, plus
memorabilia relating to celebrated players or matches, provide the
'trophies' in this market. Early issues of the annual Wisden
Cricketers' Almanack are notably in consistent demand as
witnessed when the MCC sold 110 cricket books at Christie's South
Kensington on November 2010, raising in excess of £540,000 towards
the conservation and enhancement of the core collections at
Lords.
The long history of the game dictates that cricketing ceramics
and related works of art do survive from the late 18th
and early 19th centuries (see report
on the Crump collection) but highly desirable pieces were made
by factories such as Royal Doulton into the 20th
century.
Ashes memorabilia has a special status for the English and
Australian collectors who dominate the market. Bats and balls
provenanced to famous games and the caps worn by great players of
the pre- and immediate post-War era are avidly collected - the
'baggy green' cap worn by Sir Donald Bradman during the 1948
'Invincibles' tour sold for a record Aus$402,500 at Charles
Leski Auctions in Melbourne in December 2008.
Above: a Stuart Surridge County Driver cricket bat, signed
by the 1948 Australian cricket team, including Don Bradman
(Captain), Arthur Morris and Neil Harvey. It sold for £170 at
Charterhouse auctioneers in October 2009.
Specialist sporting auctioneers include Graham Budd in London,
Convery Auctions in West Lothian, Mullock's in Shropshire and
Knights in Leicester.
A small number of other salerooms, such as Bonhams and McTear's
of Glasgow, have a dedicated sporting department, while others such
as Greenslade Taylor Hunt in Somerset, Brightwells in Leominster
and Golding Young in Lincolnshire stage regular dedicated sporting
sales.
There are also a few salerooms that focus primarily on a
specific sport such as cricket specialists T. Vennett-Smith in
Nottinghamshire and Angling Auctions in Chiswick.
Numerous other auctioneers sell sporting objects as part of
larger sales.
Golfing Memorabilia: Memoirs of Mort Olman, the Grandfather
of Collecting by Morton W. Olman, 2004. ASIN:
B0011Q9760
The Story of the Golf Ball by Kevin McGimpsey, Kevin
McGimpsey in association with Philip Wilson Publishers. ISBN
0856675661 £49hb
Soccer Memorabilia: A Collectors' Guide by Graham Budd,
Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd (July 2000). ISBN-10:
0856675040
The Football Programme: A History and Guide by John
Lister, Tempus (July 2000). ISBN-10: 0752418556
The Wisden Book of Cricket Memorabilia by Marcus
Williams and Gordon Philips, Queen Anne Press (1990). ISBN-13:
978-1852910549
Racing Art and Memorabilia: A Celebration of the Turf
by Graham Budd. Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd (2001).
ISBN-10: 0856674850 ISBN-13: 978-0856674853
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