Estimated at $500-800 in a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of September 26 but sold for $7000 (£5690) was an 1895, second edition of an early American guidebook to the game, Spalding’s Official Golf Guide…, as revised by LB Stoddart.
Running to 43pp and including photograph and woodcut illustrations, this early example of a yearbook that remained very successful until the early 1930s was still in the original printed wrappers.
A first look at auction records would suggest that no copy of the 1893 first edition has ever surfaced at auction.
Sold for $3750 (£3050) rather than the suggested $200-300 was The Story of Wicker Park, as the boxed title on the otherwise plain green wrappers proclaims. This is a work of 1927 that may have been making its first-ever auction appearance.
It is a short report by the sponsors on the purchase and progress of the planned Wicker Park Memorial Golf Course at Highland, Indiana. Running to just 16pp, it includes a course plan by Tom Benelow and half-tone illustrations.
