Olympic Tug of War Archive Sells for £6,000

Sporting history was in demand in Tennants Auctioneers’ Toys and Models, Sporting and Fishing Sale on 5^th December, when a group of medals and ephemera relating to Frederick Holmes, who won Gold in the Tug of War in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics sold for £6,000 (all figures exclude buyer’s premium). Holmes worked for the City of London Police, whose tug of war team dominated the sport for decades. After winning the Amateur Athletics Association Tug of War Championships, the City of London Police Team went on to compete for Great Britain in the Olympics and won the Gold. As this was the last games to include the event, the team remain the reigning Olympic Tug of War champions. Included in the lot are a VII Olympiad Gold Medal, an VII Olympiad Participation Medal, two 1920s AAA Championships Olympic trials medals, a quantity of biographical material relating to Holmes and an original postcard of the Tug of War taking place in Antwerp.

A late 19^th century F.H. Ayres Tennis Racket sold for a remarkable £3,200. Rackets for the newly formalised sport of lawn tennis developed in the 1870s from those used for real or royal tennis, which had been played for centuries. Real tennis rackets are asymmetric to facilitate ground shots. The earliest lawn tennis rackets came in many variations, as each manufacturer experimented with overall form, strength, weight and string arrangement. However, the majority were made with ash, due to the wood’s inherent strength. The present example has a very slightly asymmetric or lop-sided head, a transition between the real tennis racket and the classic racket shape known today. The racket was made circa 1880 by F H Ayres, a renowned maker of rocking horses, sporting goods and games. The company was founded in 1810, and had a reputation for fine craftsmanship, suppling high-end stores such as Harrods. The company was purchased by Slazenger in the 1940s.

The Fishing section of the sale included good lots of vintage fishing flies, Hardy reels and an array of rods from early split-cane examples to modern finely engineered rods. With top lots in high demand, good prices were seen for the likes of a set of Three Cased Displays of Flies presented by Hardys (sold for £1,500), and a Hardy Fortuna 6” Big Game Reel (sold for £550). Strong bidding across the sale included international demand for a private twenty-lot collection of Subbuteo teams and accessories, which sold well above estimate, and good prices were also seen for classic Dinky diecast vehicles, such as a Dinky (Pre-War) 24c Town Sedan and a 30d Vauxhall, which sold for £300.

The sale achieved at total hammer price of £60,300 for the 504 lots, with an 88% sold rate.

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