Bidding for history as All-Ireland medal fetches €20,000

A medal won by a Roscommon Gaelic footballer in the county's first All-Ireland senior final victory yesterday fetched €20,000…

A medal won by a Roscommon Gaelic footballer in the county's first All-Ireland senior final victory yesterday fetched €20,000 at auction - just €4,000 less than a collection of four medals from Wexford's famous four-in-a-row of final wins in the 1910s.

The auction in Dublin yesterday was also notable for the sale of an original ticket for the match between Tipperary and Dublin on November 21st, 1920, which has become known as Bloody Sunday.

The ticket for the match at Croke Park, during which British soldiers killed 14 innocent people, fetched €7,500 at the sale.

It had originally been expected to sell for a figure between €2,000 and €3,000.

READ MORE

The auction, organised by Mealy's auctioneers at the Tara Towers hotel in Booterstown in south county Dublin, included a large amount of sporting memorabilia.

The nine-carat GAA medal from Roscommon's 1943 All-Ireland win was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder.

Roscommon have only won two All-Ireland senior titles, in 1943 and 1944, and Mealy's said that the price fetched exceeded all expectations.

The identity of the player who won the medal was not made public.

Jimmy Murray, who captained Roscommon to their two All-Ireland wins, died earlier this year, leaving just four survivors from those victorious teams - John Joe Nerney, Liam Gilmartin, Brendan Lynch and Hugh Gibbons.

Four medals won by Wexford's Jim Byrne during their four-in-a-row of 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 sold for €24,000.

Mealy's described the ticket from Bloody Sunday as exceedingly rare.

Written on the back is: "Pass Miss [ M] Byrne and lady friends IRPDF [ Irish Republican Prisoners Dependants Fund] Collectors."

It was signed "J.F.S." and mounted on a card with a photograph of IRA man Peadar Clancy, who was killed while trying to escape from Dublin Castle later the same day.

The auctioneers believe the publicity surrounding the recent Ireland-England rugby match at Croke Park may have helped the ticket reach such a high price. George Mealy jnr said two private collectors went head-to-head in a battle for it.

"It really went crazy in there. We were weighed down with the interest in this sale and particularly for the ticket.

"It really is the pièce de résistance of any GAA collection," Mr Mealy said.

In the light of the huge interest in the run-up to the sale, the auctioneers had increased their estimate of the expected sale price.

"We did expect it to reach up around the €5,000 mark, but not as much is it did," said Mr Mealy.

The high prices secured for a number of early GAA match programmes, which sold for up to €6,000 each, also surprised the auctioneers.