Submitted by aarAdmin on Tue, 09/30/2025 - 00:00
Former Collingwood ruckman the late Len Thompson’s 1973 Copeland Trophy (lot 4823) was the pick of Melbourne-based Abacus Auctions sporting memorabilia sale when it went under the hammer for $8000, slightly above the catalogue estimate.
The four-day auction of stamps, postal history, coins and banknotes ended on Friday September 26 with the sporting memorabilia sale.
The Copeland Trophy was part of the best collection of Australian Football League club Collingwood memorabilia outside its archives and had been assembled over the past 26 years by passionate fan Gary Diffen, who also is a keen postal history collector.
Thompson played 268 games for Collingwood between 1965 and 1978, winning five Copelands and the 1972 Brownlow Medal for the league’s best and fairest player.
Various other items of Gary’s collection performed well including the framed 1990 premiership medal awarded to James Mason (lot 4824) which sold for $3800 and a set of GoPies number plates (lot 4825) for $1900.
Four other historic Collingwood premiership medals failed to sell at auction. However, a set 1926 Craig & Hales Confectionery ‘Australian Sportsmen and Racehorses’ cigarette cards (lot 4856) changed hands for $3800. The 30 Australian Footballers cards featured players from at the time Victorian Football league clubs Fitzroy and Geelong.
Big League Series 1 cards from 1981-82 (lot 4888), including a rare example of Geelong champion Gary Ablett Sr as a Hawthorn rookie, sold for $2700 – while a 1973 Kellogg’s ‘Australian Football Caricatures’ set of 30 football cards (lot 4883) brought $2300.
The cricket memorabilia highlight was former English Test opener Jack Hobbs 1924-25 bat (lot 4565) he used to score his seventh and ninth Tests against Australia during that Ashes series – 115 runs in Sydney December 1924 and 119 in Adelaide January 1925.
On the reverse side are 31 signatures from the Australian and English teams and the bat fetched $5750.
Known as “The Master”, Hobbs is regarded widely as one of the greatest batsmen in cricketing history and has the distinction of being the leading run scorer and century maker in first class cricket.
He also was named as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Shane Warne and Sir Viv Richards.
Another cricketing feature was an Australian Test batting helmet from former Australian fast bowling great Jason Gillespie’s collection (lot 4672) that sold for $1700.
An extensive collection of photographs from the 1880s to 1941 from the Rose Stenograph Company (lot 4450) went under the hammer for $3800.
Subjects included the Boer War, Commonwealth celebrations, Duke of York visit to Australia, Coronation of King Edward VII and also his funeral.
An interesting lot (4434) was the series of convict memorabilia items including the Gardiner-Hall bushranger gang convict documents and painted portraits that sold for $2000.
