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I have a letter hand-written by Dr W.G.Grace. It is to a player he is trying to get into a team he is raising. It is after he had retired from first class cricket.
Where can I auction it?
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Vast personal Cricket memorabilia auction
By Will 3 years ago, mid-April Leave a comment on this post
On the train yesterday, I happened to read a peice by a Sotherby’s expert on some cricket memorabilia coming up for auction on Thursday at Christie’s. It’s part, or all, of the collection of the late Desmond Eager - once captain of Hampshire. The only details I can find of Eager are in a December 2000 edition of The Hampshire Cricket Society newsletter, and his name is only mentioned in passing.
By all accounts, he was a cricket-nut and is therefore welcomed warmly into cricket blogging circles, even though he’s now no longer with us. I’ve found the listings of all the sales at Christies which can be found here. There are some gems:
A Complete List of All the Grand Matches of Cricket that have been played in the Years 1804 & 1805 … by Stanhope and Graham - estimate £17,000-22,0000. The only recorded copy in existence-
WILLIAM EPPS
Cricket. A Collection of All the Grand Matches of Cricket played in England within Twenty Years, viz. from 1771 to 1791, never before published - This is absolutely fascinating - published way back in 1799, this scorecard (shown below) even uses Old English (replacing certain instances of the letter S with F, hence Hampfhire)
There are over 200 items being sold, and not just in “fantasy money” price ranges, so if you can spare time on Thursday and are in London, why not pop along? Never been to an auction myself, so I don’t know if you can just turn up, but I don’t see why not.
The article mentions one of the books, Le Cricket pour les Sportsmen Français which “represents a valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to translate the laws of the game into French.” Examples:
Duck = Oeuf de canard (duck’s egg)
Googlie = Bowling haut et lent (bowling high and slow)
LBW = Jambe-devant-guichet (leg in front of ticket office)
Another book makes mention of the oddities of cricket, and the teams to have played it:
Handsome v Uglies
Women with bats v Men with Broomsticks playing left hand
Heavy with Sin v Light with Honesty
What a collection, and thank God I’ve found it. This is as close as I, or even most people reading this, will come to looking at the documents and books unless people like the MCC or museums are willing to cough up for them. I really hope so.
Tags: auction, books, christies, memorabilia |
3 Responses to “Vast personal Cricket memorabilia auction”
July 13th, 2006 at 5.25 pm
July 13th, 2006 at 5.46 pm
Try e-bay.com. You can chose how long it is on offer and remove it if you don’t get the price you like.
If I had any money, I’d offer you a good price right now. Sadly, I am poor - I have 2 teenaged daughters.
October 31st, 2006 at 7.59 pm
hello
i have a signed cricket bat from 1985
it has all the australian teams signatures the england team and yorkshires
i have no idea what match it was from but i assume the ashes what was posibly played at the yccc as this is on the bat
would there be any interest for this
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