Sport memorabilia

A white marble sculpture of a young man holding what appears to be a cricket ball flew away from its estimate to bring $30,000 (£23,700) at Andrew Jones (25% buyer’s premium).

By far the most desirable wares from the Goodwin & Harris ‘Metropolitan Scenery’ series of blue and white transfer printed earthenwares are those featuring cricketers in the grounds of Windsor Great Park.

With Arsenal still setting the pace at the top of the Premier League as we went to press, several lots offered at Graham Budd’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale on March 7-8 acted as a reminder of the club’s formative days.

“A very rare and early item of cricketing history” is how Knights Sporting Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) describes the large silk handkerchief shown here.

With Wimbledon on the way at the end of the month we look at options for memorabilia

If you wanted to keep the strings of a tennis racket taut, you could do with a tennis racket press – a device consisting of a frame closed by a spring mechanism.

A group of “rare and interesting” 20th century cycling ephemera relating primarily to the Olympic Games offered by Catherine Southon (20% buyer’s premium) came from the collection of cycling journalist David Taylor (1937-2020).

Remarkable Birkett family archive sold at Rogers Jones auction reflected the earliest days of organised sport.

The oldest surviving FA Cup was bought by Manchester City FC owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed when it sold at auction last year, it has now been revealed.

The first 20 lots of the recent football memorabilia sale at Stacey’s in Rayleigh, Essex came from the family of the Edwardian player Benjamin Warren (1879-1917).

Golf books do not bring as many really high prices as was once the case, but the most recent of the regular sales in this category held by a Californian saleroom did contain a couple of surprises.