Medal

Two large 18th century gold medals depicting events from the reign of Catherine the Great sold for spectacular sums at Duke’s latest auction in Dorchester.

Sales of coins and medals at UK auctions have doubled in value over the past decade to £44.7m.

Setting a record for a football medal at £220,000, Stanley Matthews's 1953 F.A. Cup Final winner's medal drew dramatic competition at Graham Budd’s sale of sporting memorabilia earlier this week.

169 years after Franklin’s ill-fated 1845-48 attempt to find the western exit to the Northwest Passage, his Third Officer's Arctic Medal has come up for sale just as the Canadian government has announced that one of Franklin’s ships has been located.

It is not often that auctioneer Graham Budd finds his name splashed over the front pages of Estonian newspapers but when a particular group of cycling memorabilia came up at his November 4-5 sale it is exactly what happened.

Four historic football medals and a gold watch belonging to Heart of Midlothian FC were stolen by a thief who appears to have strolled in through an open door.

Even in the collecting field of the ‘heroic age’ of Polar exploration where items reflecting incredible stories of human endurance seem to come thick and fast, there are still some that really take the breath away.

If you want to complete a collection of Olympic participation medals, then one in particular – that made for the 1904 Games in St Louis – is going to cost you a lot of money.

Of more than 2000 different recorded horse brass designs, the most desirable are traditionally the so-called ‘merit awards’ given as prizes at working horse parades.

THE uplifting story of how West Auckland FC won ‘the first world cup’ has gone down in the annals of English football.

MAKING £160,000 hammer at Convery Auctions last week, Nobby Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal eclipsed the £140,000 made by team-mate Alan Ball's medal at Christie's South Kensington in May 2005 and set the highest price seen for a '66 medal so far at public auction.

IN a week when the 1968 European Cup winner’s medal awarded to George Best sold for £130,000, the appearance of more blue-chip sporting memorabilia on the auction market has been announced.

SPORT is never far from controversy these days. So it was no surprise when the news that George Best’s and Nobby Stiles’s most valued medals and trophies were to be sold that there was an outcry in certain sections of the media.

SPECIALIST dealers believe fake medals from the XXIXth Olympiad in Beijing are appearing for sale on eBay.

HUDDERSFIELD Town may not feature on Sky Sports as much as Manchester United nowadays, but back in the mid-1920s it was the Terriers rather than the Red Devils who were the team to watch.

SETTING an auction record for a golf medal, Willie Fernie's 1883 Open Championship winner's medal sold for £48,500 at the sale held by Maxwells of Wilmslow, Cheshire on July 15. In good condition and in its original box, the silver-gilt medal was won by Scotland’s four-times runner-up in his only Open victory at Musselburgh.

This year’s FA Cup was seen as something of a turn-up with Portsmouth and Cardiff, two teams from outside the Premier League’s top four, reaching the final. But there was a time when the now-mighty Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal were nowhere to be seen in the competition.

British medals are realising ever higher prices and it seems that buyers almost invariably hail from these sceptred isles.

The date of November 5 seemed apt for Spink’s (17.65% buyer’s premium) 623-lot sale of Orders, Decorations Campaign Medals and Militaria (ODM), the fireworks of Guy Fawkes Day recalling the whizz-bangs and crashes of wartime when many of these medals were won. Some of these bangs and crashes left themselves to metaphor, as records were falling all over the place.

Well, it’s happened at last! The first £1million sale of campaign medals and awards (ODM) has taken place. It took Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 1155 lots to disperse this assemblage. The total was £1,013,510 and this is the hammer total so there was no fudging with the buyer’s premium to jack the total over the magic number.