Another day at the auction

by Brian Sanderson

The final day of the Knights auction began at 10:30 yesterday morning with a series of cricket postcards. Attracting me most were those produced by the Walkers company in Scarborough, who used to take photographs of all the teams at the September festival. They did this from about 1920 to 1950, and made the postcards available for sale at the matches. Yesterday I purchased four of Leveson-Gower XI’s visits (1932-1938); also a signed postcard of Maurice Leyland by Walkers for £240. The most expensive of these postcards, which went for £400, was of the 1926 Australian touring party, signed in ink.

But the section which most interested me was that focused on scorecards. The oldest were of the Gentlemen v. Players matches of 1862 and 1863, which went for £180. The most expensive, at £3000, was of the Grand All England Match versus Twenty-Two of Otago in 1864. Another expensive scorecard chronicled the First Test Match in England, versus Australia at the Oval in 1880. That fetched £2000.

I set my sights a little lower, picking up Kent v Yorkshire in 1883, in which Ephraim Lockwood made his career-best score of 208. I am  very interested in Ephraim, who was born in Huddersfield and had a long career for Yorkshire. I have a cabinet photograph of him and an exercise book documenting all his matches, which I think was compiled by his wife. The scorecard will go well with this collection.

There were also five silk scorecards of the Test Matches of 1909; of course I bought the Third Test at Headingley, which the Australians won by 126 runs (Macartney taking eleven for 85)—another for my growing collection of Headingley Test scorecards.

Another interesting item was the first women’s international match, England v. West Australia in Perth 1934, which brought in £300.

All in all, a very interesting auction, at which, as ever, I spent far too much. But I look forward to the next one in November.

Brian Sanderson is an ACS member. He serves on the Yorkshire Cricket Archives Committee. If you would like to contribute to this newsletter, please either respond to the email in which you received it, or leave a comment below.