A 1966 World Cup-Winner’s medal from the famous England v Germany encounter was the other best seller in the Old Brompton Road rooms on March 27, while down the road Bonhams Chelsea (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) were also hosting a football collectables gathering, offering no fewer than 888 lots over two days from March 27-28.
The Cup-Winner’s medal was awarded to England squad member Ray Wilson who, although not one of the goal scorers, played a significant part in the historic match as a defender, as well as helping Everton to the FA cup in the same year. This yellow gold medal, inscribed with Wilson’s name, had been entered by the footballer. It carried a substantial £70,000-90,000 estimate and sold at the lower end to a telephone bidder.
Together with Pelé’s record-breaking shirt, which went over the phone against the room for £140,000, it provided over half the entire £395,470 total. But there was an equally encouraging take-up by lottage, with 82 per cent of the 275 lots changing hands. Moreover, this was repeated in the much bigger and broader-based £170,000 sale at Bonhams, where there was an 85 per cent take-up, which suggests that the market for football collectables is strong across the board, with takers for the lower to mid-range collectables (provided they are pitched realistically) not just for the once-in-a-blue-moon rarities.
Christie’s sale was a carefully pruned selection focusing on players’ collections. A decade of footballing sales at Christie’s has convinced specialist David Convery that it is this type of primary provenanced material that performs the most consistently, and he was rewarded here with near sellouts in those properties.
Other notable results at CSK included a yellow-metal and enamel European Cup-Winner’s cup from 1961 awarded to Danny Blanchflower, which fetched a within-estimate £9000, and a white England international shirt worn by Geoff Hurst for the 1966 World Cup – not in the final against Germany but in the quarter finals against Argentina – which fetched £8000.
There were also two much higher than predicted prices for some earlier printed ephemera from Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur, the result of some stiff competition from determined club fans. One was an album of black and white photographs relating to Bolton Wanderers’ 1923 FA Cup victory plus other photos and postcards, that came from a 15-lot section relating to the career of Joe Smith, who captained Bolton at what was the first FA Cup Final to take place at Wembley. That was undoubtedly a factor in prompting two Bolton fans to take it way past an estimate that David Convery conceded was a “tiny bit underpriced” at £700-1000. The hammer finally fell to one of the fans, also a British dealer, at £8000.
The Tottenham lot comprised a collection of 106 black and white postcards covering Spurs’ football history from 1903-23 and was estimated at £800-1000. It sold for £7000 to a British collector.
The most expensive lot at Bonhams proved, as expected, to be another World Cup shirt. In this case it belonged to Just Fontaine of France, who wore it for the match against Germany during the 1958 World Cup and it sold just under the low end of its £5000-7000 estimate at £4500. Fontaine scored 13 goal in six matches in this tournament, a record for the number of goals scored in any World Cup that still stands. Offered along with the no. 17 shirt was a letter of authentication from Fontaine, three photographs, one autographed, and a signed cover of Paris Match for June 28, 1958.
Well-pitched football collectables prove they have a large fan base
While Pelé’s shirt received nearly all the post-sale plaudits, it wasn’t the only piece of football history to go under the hammer at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last week, and CSK was not the only London room offering a sale of football memorabilia.
