The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
‘A rugby jersey in an old bag sold for £180k’
Rugby enthusiasts will pay big money for kit worn by players, writes Rachel Mortimer
Jerseys, caps and scrap books kept in an airing cupboard fetched £60,000
Seven years ago an elderly widow walked into an auctioneers in Cardiff with a small fortune in a plastic bag. She was the proud owner of a 1905 New Zealand touring jersey worn by then-captain of the All Blacks, Dave Gallaher.
The contents would go on to sell for £180,000 and set the record for the highest price paid at a British auction for rugby clothing. Ben Rogers Jones, of auctioneer Rogers Jones Co, which sold the jersey, said: “We advised an initial wide estimate of £20,000 to £40,000 which would pique collectors’ interest.
“The plan was to offer the jersey during the 2015 Rugby World Cup being held in England later that year, as interest in the sport would be at fever pitch.”
With this year’s Six Nations getting underway today, interest in memorabilia is expected to peak again.
Vintage jerseys get the rugby community excited. The older the item, the better, and if it is splashed with mud from its last game, you are on to a winner. Tops worn by historic players can sell for tens of thousands of pounds and early 20th century caps are worth thousands. These big-ticket items are typically snapped up by a handful of wealthy buyers or museums. Sellers, on the other hand, are usually unsuspecting, said Mr Rogers Jones.
“There are people who have their great- grandfather’s or uncle’s jersey stored in a drawer somewhere, and they could well be sitting on a fortune. It really is remarkable how much they can sell for on the day,” he said.
A collection of jerseys, caps and scrap books owned by three generations of the Birkett family, stalwarts of English rugby in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had been stored in a relative’s airing cupboard before selling at auction last year for almost £60,000.
But not all rugby jerseys are equally valuable. Philip Atkinson, of Mullock’s Auctions and the Rugby Memorabilia Society, said: “Merchandise is not memorabilia. If a shirt was designed to make money and be sold to fans, it’s not valuable to collectors.”
The market for rugby collectibles is driven by age and success, said Mr Atkinson. “Material from the Rugby World Cup in 2003, won by England, goes for a lot more than other, even earlier, tournaments,” he said. “But age is usually a sweetener and old British Lions material is very popular. We have a scarlet jersey from the 1950 tour on sale in a couple of months and it should bring in a few thousand pounds. If clothing pre- dates the world wars, and has been worn on the pitch, that’s when buyers start paying huge sums.”
Even match programmes and tickets from this era sell for hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds. A match programme from the 1905 Wales v New Zealand match, an historic win for the Dragons, can fetch up to £4,000, said Mr Atkinson.
Despite the high price tags, most fans collect rugby memorabilia for a love of the game, rather than as an investment. One such enthusiast, 59-year- old Raymond Ruddick from Pontypool, in south Wales, has been collecting match programmes since he was nine years old. “My first international match was Wales v France in 1976, the Grand Slam decider. I went with my father and bought a programme for 20p and have been collecting programmes ever since,” he said.
Despite the value of immaculately kept early programmes, Mr Ruddick has no intention of selling any of his collection. He said: “It is just a matter of time until rugby programmes are a thing of the past and that is all the more reason to collect them for future generations to appreciate.”