150-year-old FA Cup medal could sell for £6,000 at auction | British News
A football trophy awarded 145 years ago goes under the hammer.
An FA Cup medal was awarded to Wanderers FC in 1877 after winning the second of three consecutive cups.
The game was the sixth final of the world’s oldest football competition and the Wanderers’ fourth cup win.
The medal is inscribed ‘Football Association Challenge Cup, Wanderers 1877’ and is expected to sell for £6,000 when it is auctioned next week.
The team’s captain, Charles William Alcock, is the founder of the FA Cup tournament and makes the medal a real piece of footballing history.
Alastair McCrea is Head of Entertainment and Sports Memorabilia at Ewbank’s Auctioneers in Surrey, where the medal is sold.
He said: “An early cup winners’ medal at the oldest domestic football tournament in the world is rare enough indeed.”
“But to have someone so closely associated with the founding father of the competition and the top team of the time is just great.”
The Wanderers started out as a Forest Football Club in 1859 and are believed to have changed their name in 1864 as the club never had its own home stadium.
In all, the club won the competition five times, including the hat-trick from 1876 to 1878. Only one other club has achieved this feat: Blackburn Rovers won three consecutive cups between 1884 and 1886.
The rule at the time was that any team that won three times in a row could keep the trophy permanently – but Mr Alcock returned it on the condition that the rule was changed so no club could ever keep it.
Wanderers finally failed in 1884 after losing players to new up-and-coming clubs.
The medal has a presale price of £4,000 to £6,000.
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