This four-lot group consisted of typed accounts of his researches into the history of what is generally recognised as the world’s first golf club.
Bid to $19,000 (£15,200) on April 13 was The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. Its Titles in the Past of 1948, the rarest of all of Clapcott’s writings, which until 1985 were known only in his own typescripts in stiff paper or card wrappers. Running to just 13 leaves, typed on one side only, this was the final research paper that he produced towards a planned history of the Honourable Company.
Sold at £17,000 (£13,600) was a rather larger typed copy of The Match Dinners of the Honourable Company… 1744 to 1932, which ran to over 51 typed leaves in string bound, stiff brown covers.
Edited by Alastair Johnston, a compendium of The Clapcott Papers and his researches into the Honourable Company… was privately published in 1985 in Edinburgh in a limited edition of 400 copies.
Sold for $3500 (£2800) in the San Francisco sale was a 1912 edition of David Cooper’s “Far & Sure”. Notes on the Golfing Resorts on the Glasgow & South Western Railway, illustrated throughout with photographs of Troon, Prestwick and other courses.
This G&SWR publication had first appeared in 1899, but all editions are rare and no other is recorded at auction.
