Sidney Day’s First World War VC and other awards sold to Lord Ashcroft in the London auction held by Dix Noonan Webb on February 28 for £160,000 (£192,000 with buyers' commission) against an estimate of £120,000-140,000.
He had been in the running for the Gordon Campbell VC group which made an auction record £700,000 hammer price at Morton & Eden, bought by Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, who is actually Campbell’s great-nephew.
But Lord Ashcroft has now secured the Day group, awarded to Day in 1917. He is Day, who is one of only two men of the Suffolk Regiment ever to be awarded Britain’s highest gallantry decoration.
It was the latest in a string of VCs to be sold by DNW. See the ATG preview for the full story behind Day’s VC.
The Lord Ashcroft Gallery is a permanent gallery housing the world’s largest collection of VCs, alongside a significant collection of George Crosses (the civilian equivalent of the VC, or for actions ‘not in the face of the enemy’).
It opened in 2010 with a donation of £5m by Lord Ashcroft.
