Selling off the family silver

posted by John Winn

During the 1970s and 80s I built up a large collection of Darlington FC programmes dating back in a few cases to the 1920s. Following their demotion to the Northern League for financial reasons in 2012 and their exile to Bishop Auckland for four years my support for the club waned and last season, for the first time in about 30 years, I did not see them play despite the fact that home matches are now played back  in Darlington, sharing with Darlington RUFC at Blackwell Meadows, just about a mile from my beloved Feethams.

I stopped collecting programmes in 2000 and five years ago donated virtually a complete set from the years between 1970 and 2000 to the club to dispose of as they wished. They decided to keep them for their archive. About twelve months ago I decided to sell the remainder through an organisation called Sportingold, based in Buckinghamshire.

Sportingold hold auctions of sporting memorabilia about ten times a year, the next is on March 8th and bids can be placed on line, by post or phone and in person at the auctions which are held in Stokenchurch near High Wycombe. The excellent catalogue is dominated by football, not just programmes but shirts, medals, photographs, autographs, badges etc. Cricket items occupy a relatively small part of the catalogue but at the last sale there were a number of items from the summer game. These included handbooks, scorecards including one for Gentleman v Players at Lord's in 1887. This had a reserve of £70 and sold for that amount. Other items included photographs and cigarette cards, about fifty lots in all. Other sports included boxing, both rugby codes and horse racing. 

I have submitted items to the last eight auctions, more will come under the hammer on March 8th, and have been very pleased with the results. The organisation is very impressive, just put Sportingold into a search engine and you will be able to access the last catalogue, the one for the next auction will appear about a week in advance of the sale. It takes about six weeks for payment to arrive, which might seem a long time but of course payment has to be collected from a range of buyers and their cheques cleared. Including the March date there are seven more auctions this year and I estimate that by submitting programmes to each of those I should just about clear my collection by the end of the year. If you feel inclined to look in your loft you might be encouraged by some of the prices realised at the last sale with many items fetching over three figure sums and some exceeding the £1000 mark. Commission is 12%. Good luck.

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