Sporting Memorabilia & Equipment

THE most topical entry in Clevedon Salerooms (15% buyer's premium) large 1200-lot outing on June 17-18 was a collection of Olympics memorabilia. Entered by descendants of the 1908 gold medal winning water polo player Thomas H. Thould, the group fetched £3300.

EXCEPTIONAL golfing collectables can still command exceptional prices.

ENGLISH Test victories aside, the cricket highlight of the summer was a sale held by Knights at the Holiday Inn, Sandy (Beds) on June 19, which offered over 900 lots of cricket memorabilia.

THE most expensive single football programme in a June 20-21 sale held by Knights was a 1921 FA Cup Final programme, right, for the game at Stamford Bridge in which Spurs beat Wolves 1-0. It sold for £2400.

THE Cricket, Tennis and Traditional Sports sale at Christie’s South Kensington on June 22 saw a hammer total of £87,355 from the 163-lot offering. Yet nearly three quarters of this figure came from the two top lots alone, hence the sold by value figure of 63 per cent was noticeably higher than the sold by lot figure of 51 per cent.

WHEN Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1906, the problems that beset the 1908 Olympic Games had begun. Rome, the intended host city for the games, was forced to withdraw and London stepped in with an offer to take over. A 68,000-seat stadium in White City, completed Athens-style at the eleventh hour, became the location for the fourth modern games.

THE first outing for Sotheby’s associate Graham Budd Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) offered a large range of sporting memorabilia in a 885-lot sale held at Sotheby’s Olympia on June 9. Football was the most represented sport, contributing to well over half the total number of lots.

COINCIDING with the run up to the British Open at Royal Troon, Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) held their summer sale of golf memorabilia on July 8. According to the specialist in charge, David Convery, the auction was “well attended by British based and American buyers,” but, nevertheless, there was still something of a polite hush around the saleroom with most lots barely scraping past their reserves.

NEARLY 1300 lots were offered by Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff in an April 21 sale of sports memorabilia and among the soccer programmes, there was a bit of a shock when a 1945 programme for a Newport County v Chelsea match, valued at £30-40, was bid to £2600!

DATES have been announced for the first collectors’ sales to be held at Sotheby’s Olympia by the company’s former in-house specialists, now working independently.

THE first day of the March 13-14 angling sale held by Mullock Madeley at Ludlow Racecourse was devoted to the literature of the sport. Seen right is one of two complete runs of The Creel from the years 1963-67 that sold at £200 and £210. A set of all bar one of the ...How to Catch Them series, all in dust jackets and all bar the Pike book first editions, sold at £460.

BOUND volumes of Manchester United home match programmes from the 1950s seasons were the best sellers in the football section of a sporting memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester on January 28, with prices ranging from £520 to £1300 for the volume covering the 1957-58 season that brought the devastating Munich air disaster.

Portsmouth are just hanging on in the Premiership at present, but they too have had their glory days, and in a December 10 sale held by Nesbits of neighbouring Southsea, this programme (right) for the last pre-war FA Cup Final of 1939, in which they beat Wolves 4-1, was sold for £400 (a ticket for that game made £135) and another for the 1934 final, in which they had been beaten 2-1 by Manchester City, was bid to £450.

EXCEPTING the Norwich Union (one-day) cup that the team picked up a couple of seasons back, trophies for Kent County Cricket Club have been a bit thin on the ground in recent years. By today’s county standards, a St Lawrence (Canterbury) gate of 4000 is considered a good one and – though Sussex picked up the county title last year – today it is Surrey that remain the side to beat.

The date of November 5 seemed apt for Spink’s (17.65% buyer’s premium) 623-lot sale of Orders, Decorations Campaign Medals and Militaria (ODM), the fireworks of Guy Fawkes Day recalling the whizz-bangs and crashes of wartime when many of these medals were won. Some of these bangs and crashes left themselves to metaphor, as records were falling all over the place.

The Story of the Golf Ball by Kevin McGimpsey, published by Kevin McGimpsey in association with Philip Wilson Publishers. ISBN 0856675661 £49hb

Historians of the craft of fish carving currently believe that the Scotsman John B. Russell (1819/20-1893) was the first professional maker of such models. Working with carver John Tully at the Fochabers Studio, which made models for Farlow & Co. into the 1930s, Russell is known to have been producing these fine trophies from around 1880, although the early date to the example pictured here suggests some rewriting of the literature might be required.

The market for cricket memorabilia is dominated by Australian and UK collectors who battle every summer for the best entries in London’s major June and July sporting sales. This year Melbourne-based Ludgrove’s (15% buyer’s premium) joined the major houses and held a Literary, Historical and Sporting sale on July 29 at St James DeVere Cavendish Hotel.

Well, it’s happened at last! The first £1million sale of campaign medals and awards (ODM) has taken place. It took Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 1155 lots to disperse this assemblage. The total was £1,013,510 and this is the hammer total so there was no fudging with the buyer’s premium to jack the total over the magic number.

It is one of the best known moments in sport. Donald Bradman, batsman without peer, arrives at the crease in his final test match at the Oval on August 14 1948, requiring just four runs for a Test career average of 100.