Golf was a key component of the sale but the most expensive of the few books on offer was not one of the old classics, but a limited edition of 1993 – A. & J. Johnson’s The Chronicles of Golf 1447 to 1857. One of 900 copies, it had a damaged dust jacket but was still in the original slipcase and brought £720.
Sold at £150 was a good copy of J.S. Martin’s The Curious History of the Golf Club of 1968.
[In a February 6 sale held by Y Gelli in Hay, a 1906 first of Horace Hutchinson’s Golf Greens and Green-Keeping, the cloth binding a little worn and soiled, went to Hawthorn Books at £330].
Where cricket is concerned, autograph albums were the main attraction of the Chester sale and one containing over 250 signed photographs and postcards featuring English cricketers and cricket of the ’60s made £2300. Three albums of photographs and cuttings relating to a 1934-35 tour to Australia by an English women’s team sold at £300.
Sporting highlights serve up a real ace
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.