Rare Geelong premiership medal up for auction

[Dogwatcher]

When the Geelong Football Club won the Victorian Football Association premiership in 1884, it was the club’s sixth win in a competition that had started eight years earlier. It was a team of tough and talented players for whom a trip to Melbourne was more than simply a day’s outing. It was a clash of cultures – often a physical clash - something that hasn’t changed for the fiercely independent club in well over a century.
(Two years later, while heading to Melbourne to play South Melbourne in the Grand Final, it was reported that saboteurs attempted to destroy one of the trains carrying Geelong supporters).
This was the golden era for Geelong. They blitzed the competition which consisted of eight teams, seven of whom remain in the expanded national competition. In Geelong’s 154 year history, it has won a total of 16 premierships or 10 since 1884.
While premierships have become rare for the club known colloquially as The Cats, rarer still are premiership medals from these very early years. Such a medal from 1884 has surfaced; a remarkable and valuable reminder of a team of champions who set the tone for Australia’s home-grown sporting code.
The medal is cast in solid gold and engraved on the front with the words ‘G.F.C./Premiers/1884’. On the reverse is the name ‘T.Cahill’, which may refer to the player who later entered State politics.
“Medals like these rarely come up for auction,” says Charles Leski.  “We’re not aware of many being in private hands and those who own them are generally very possessive. It’s unlikely that there are many out there that haven’t already surfaced.”
Lot 895 has a pre-sale estimate of $8,000 - $10,000.  (NB:  Image available at  http://www.mossgreen.com.au/images/lot/1930/19308_2.jpg
The lot will be offered for sale by Mossgreen in Melbourne on Thursday, December 5th at 2.30pm. 
Single-owner auction specialist, Mossgreen, and Leski Auctions, one of Australia’s largest auctioneers of coins, stamps and sporting memorabilia merged in July 2013, creating an entity with $20 million annual turnover.
Mossgreen, as the new entity is known, is a market leader in the sale of Australian & international art, Indigenous art, Chinese & Asian arts, decorative arts, early photography, books, medals, coins, stamps, maps, travel memorabilia, advertising posters and sporting memorabilia.
Mossgreen holds the record for any artwork by a living artist sold in Australia with John Olsen’s Love in the Kitchen, 1969, selling for $1.09 million in 2006.
Mossgreen also set a new auction record for any Asian artwork in Australia when it sold a 15th century Chinese gilt bronze figure for $1.22 million in 2012.
Leski Auctions, established in 1973, previously sold many significant collections, including those of Shirley Strickland, Ron Clarke, Sir Reginald Ansett and former RSL President, Bruce Ruxton.  It has sold more ‘baggy green’ caps than any other auction house in the world.  Leski Auctions sold the Phar Lap horse tonic recipe book and achieved a world record price for a Bradman bat.