Allan Border’s baggy green to go under hammer
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Posted June 17, 2008 12:00am
Jane Metlikovec

ONE of the most famous baggy greens is up for auction. Allan Border's cricket cap is expected to sell for more than $20,000 when it goes under the hammer at Leski Auctions in Hawthorn later this month.

It is believed to be the first Border baggy green on sale.
The cap is among more than $30,000 of memorabilia, including a signed bat and other caps and shirts, once owned by one of Australia's most distinguished cricket captains.

The collection is owned by Keith Attree, a former long-time room attendant at the WACA in Perth, who is now in his 70s.

Auctioneer Charles Leski said Border had given Mr Attree the items at various stages of his career in exchange for memorabilia Mr Attree had received from cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman.

Having recently suffered a stroke, Mr Attree decided it was time to part with a small portion of his vast collection, Mr Leski said.

"Mr Attree loves his cricket memorabilia, but with his health problems, he recognises the need to make life simpler for his wife and sons."

Border's gear will be auctioned alongside two caps owned by former Test bowler Colin Miller, expected to fetch up to $10,000 each.

Border's gear will be auctioned alongside two caps owned by former Test bowler Colin Miller, expected to fetch up to $10,000 each.

A cap worn by Bruce Laird, who made his Test debut at 30 in the 1979-80 series, is also up for auction.

It has a pre-sale estimate of $8000-$10,000.

The owner of another baggy green, from the 1989-90 Test series against Pakistan, is unknown. It is expected to fetch at least $3000.

Mr Leski said if the final cap sold for close to its estimate, it would be one of the best value baggy greens ever bought.

"Baggy greens are iconic and rarely offered for public sale," he said.

The caps are among 657 lots of sporting and related memorabilia at the auction.

It will take place at 13 Cato St, Hawthorn, on June 26, beginning at 5.30pm.

In 2005, Mr Attree tried to sell through Leski Auctions a baggy green he claimed Steve Waugh gave him, but Waugh rejected its authenticity.

Courtesy Herald Sun - Link to original article

News from other Sources

Tradition goes under the hammer
Peter Lalor, June 14, 2008

ALLAN BORDER is as surprised as anyone to learn that his baggy green cap is being hocked by an auction house with an asking price of between $10,000 and $15,000.

"Mine?" he says. "There's no way I would sell any of that stuff."

Border has his first baggy green framed and guarded. It is a precious item to him and he would never let it go, but the auction house is selling one along with scores of other items from what is titled The Allan Border collection, including numerous state caps.

The baggy green being sold is almost certainly his too, the auction house has two letters of authentication and he's signed the inside label. Border concedes that over the years he had many Australian caps.

The one in question found its way to a former West Australian dressing room attendant and collector Keith Attree who is now elderly and suffering the effects of a stroke.

Border remembers Attree, who was well liked by the players, was often "sniffing around" for memorabilia, but cannot remember giving him a baggy green, although he says it is possible.

"You give these things in good faith and you don't expect people to make money out of it, maybe they have fallen on bad times or ill health or something," the former captain said.

"We got given a couple of caps every Ashes tour or whenever we wanted one and I used to swap them with players from other countries. You never know how these things get back into the market or are on-sold. It's hard to keep a track of what would be a cap that I've worn."

Attree is also selling a baggy green from former opening batsman Bruce Laird. The cricketer remembers selling the collector bags of gear from the roof of his house some time after he played.

"I didn't think anyone else would want it and it would sit in the roof and go mouldy," Laird says. "This guy asked to look and then offered me some money for it.

"That stuff, it's only worth what people want to pay for it, by the way, what's the baggy green going for?"

The catalogue suggests between $8000-10,000.

"F..k!", Laird exclaims involuntarily when he hears the sum. "Oh, excuse me. Is that right? Eight to ten grand? Jesus! I definitely didn't get that much."

Laird reveals that he probably had six caps in his career and he has held on to the one that he played in.

"I wouldn't sell that one," he says.

It is the Charles Leski auction house that is selling Attree's gear - it is not his entire collection - and the sale later this month also features Colin Miller's special baggy green from the Centenary of Federation match in 2001. The cap bears the signature "Funky" and "#379", his player number, on the inside.

The asking price is $6000-10,000 and a one-off miniature baggy green given to all former Test players in 2003 is asking $8000-10,000.

Miller, 44, who played 18 Tests later on in his career, is the vendor. He is getting married this weekend and has shifted to Las Vegas. He told friends the memorabilia was useless to him as he wasn't going to be putting it on the walls of his new home so he might as well sell it.

The iconic baggy green is the subject of a new book and coincidentally an exhibition at the Bradman Museum in Bowral.

The book, The Baggy Green: The pride, passion and history of Australia's sporting icon by Michael Fahey and senior cricket columnist for The Weekend Australian Mike Coward, is the first comprehensive examination of the history and evolution of the head gear.

It includes stories of how Bradman's godson, Richard Robins, stole Ashley Mallett's cap from the Lord's changing rooms in 1972 and how Kim Hughes ended up with a dose of head lice from his.

Coward even reveals that one of the most celebrated caps of all, Stephen Waugh's, is not the only baggy green the Australian skipper wore during his career and may not be the one presented to him for his first Test as has long been asserted.

Waugh believed - and wrote in his autobiography - that his baggy green was presented to him when he represented the Australian under-19 team on a tour of Pakistan in 1984 along with his brother Mark and fellow NSW batsman Mark Taylor.

Coward's research reveals that those caps were embroidered with the words "Youth XI" which means it is not the same item that caught his blood when he had the sickening collision with Jason Gillespie in Sri Lanka, 1999. Waugh also played in another cap in England in 1993 after temporarily misplacing the other.

It was Waugh who raised the cap to the iconic status it holds today. Most former players are pleased to see the respect the new generation has for it and are pleased that the days when they were handed out at will are gone, although there are some cynics.

Ian Chappell refers to the cap as "a $5 piece of cloth" which might interest Tim Serisier who paid $425,000 for Don Bradman's Invincibles cap when it was put up for auction by Ludgrove's in 2003.

According to Fahey, that Bradman cap, which had been the focus of a national campaign by News Limited newspapers to raise money and keep it in Australia, had actually been quietly bought before auction by an intermediary for less than $360,000 and then sold to Serisier who was also lumped with $42,500 GST when he brought it back to Australia.

The sale was made even more controversial when another Bradman Invincibles cap was put on the market in 2004 and donated to the State Library of South Australia by Kevin Truscott.

"Imagine how Tim Serisier felt," Fahey writes. "When he bought his 1948 cap in July 2003 there was just one Invincibles cap and only six Bradman caps in existence. Eighteen months later there were nine caps and, most dramatically, two from his famous farewell series."

The baggy green's monetary value has doubled in the past decade. The 122 recorded sales have netted over $2million and the average price, when the Bradmans are excluded, is over $10,000, while today they fetch closer to $20,000.

Naturally such values have led to some dodgy dealings over the years. Mallett had one stolen from his pocket collecting money at the MCG for the victims of Cyclone Tracy. The other, as mentioned earlier, was stolen by Robins when he was a schoolboy from the Lord's rooms in 1972.

Mallett did not know the identity of the thief until he received a letter from Robins, son of Test player Walter Robins, in 1998. The Australian initially said that the Englishman could keep the baggy green, but then decided he would like to donate it to the Ayr Cricket Club in Scotland and so asked for it back.

Mallett was shocked to learn that Robins had sold the cap for an unknown sum. It was also Robins who sold the Invincibles cap that eventually fetched $425,000.

Ricky Ponting had his baggy green stolen on his way home from Sri Lanka early in his career and one stolen from Jason Gillespie was later found to be up for auction, which did not please the bowler.

Some believe it is sacrilege to sell the baggy green although circumstances don't always allow for such high principals.

Kerry O'Keeffe was forced to sell his first baggy green when he hit hard times. He got $5000 for it from a collector and regretted it ever after as he did not have another. However, in 2006 he met the sons of a late friend John McLaughlin at a bar for a drink.

The boys produced a baggy green from a paper bag and gave it to the spinner who had forgotten giving it to their father when a little emotional at a Christmas party many years before.

The returned cap has pride of place in O'Keeffe's collection.

Max Walker and Kim Hughes both use theirs to inspire school children and let the kids try them on. Hughes paid the price when he caught head lice from one school visit, but is not deterred from the practice.

Australia's youngest Test captain, Ian Craig, has lent his cap to the Bradman Museum and it is one of 42 on display from today. The exhibition reveals how the baggy green has evolved over the years, a story also traced in the book The Baggy Green.

The coat of arms on the baggy green is not the Australian coat of arms as is commonly thought. The shield on the cap features symbols of commerce, agriculture, migration and mining. Few know that the agricultural symbol is a slaughtered sheep.

Victor Trumper's 1899 cap, which is on display, is not even a "baggy" green and more of the skull-cap style. At times, player's numbers were embroidered on the cap and there was a period when the words "Advance Australia" were featured.

Craig, 73, remembers that in his day they were so common he believes his mother may have thrown one out because it was a little worn.

"I have one now, but I think I got about seven. We used to get two on each tour and one in a domestic season, I had three tours and one domestic season which added up to seven caps in five years, whereas now they get one in 15 years," Craig said.

"I have no idea where the others are, I know I would have given some to people on tour and the one I have is just about brand new and is probably the second one I had on a tour.

"I expect my mother disposed of the other one thinking it wasn't good enough to keep."

Craig is one of the old school who believe that it is not right for the cap to be allowed to be worn in a dilapidated state by the post-punk generation and he has watched with interest as its iconic nature has evolved.

"It's very interesting, it's been very well marketed the whole concept of it and it's certainly given something of pride to the players," Craig said. "We just looked at it as part of the equipment we were given like the jumper and the blazer and everything else, the pride came from being in the team and representing your country.

"I think the whole world has moved on and there's so much more emphasis on marketing and promotion and having symbols associated with all sports, it's a totally different era.

"I am comfortable with the prestige it's given and the pride it gives the players. They obviously think very highly of it. I do have a problem with the fact they do get in such poor condition. I think that is a discredit to Cricket Australia. I think there must be a better way of having a cap which they have pride in without it getting to the point where it is a bit of an embarrassment

"It's very interesting in the exhibition down here, Adam Gilchrist and Justin Langer's caps are there and I think the public will be quite surprised to see the condition some are in. They will probably be a bit disappointed in it. That's my opinion, obviously the players have this attachment to them and with some of them it would be a superstition."

Langer and Gilchrist were Waugh-era cap worshippers and were among the players who oversaw the introduction of the presentation ceremony on the morning of a player's first Test. In the past players were given a cap for just touring and many a non-Test player legitimately owns a baggy green. Indeed, Simon Katich had one but refused to wear it for some time before making his debut. Such a situation caused the sponsor cap fiasco in the recent tour game against the West Indies as Brad Haddin did not want to wear a baggy green until he debuted.

There was no ceremony in the past. Craig recalls going to Farmer's department store in George Street to pick the cap up with a blazer and jumper. Dean Jones found his at the bottom of a package sent to his parents' home. In 1979 Australian Cricket Board secretary Alan Barnes tossed them out like Frisbees to the players on a tour of India.

Border is a fan of the new found respect for the cap.

"It's better that it has moved to where it is," he said. "But I don't feel guilty about having given away 10 or 15 caps in the time that I've played.

"I agree now that I think about it, we were just very slack how we treated the cap because if you played for any length of time you ended up with a heap of caps, but now you have to sign a stat dec to get one.

"Everyone I am aware of kept the first one; you got replacement caps, which I admit to doing. It wasn't such an issue but I wouldn't do it now, but back then it was an iconic thing, but the memorabilia market wasn't what it was now, you gave things in good faith not expecting them to turn up in auction houses."

Max Williamson of Charles Leski auction house agrees that it would be rare for a modern player to sell a cap during his lifetime these days. He says that they are, by far, the most popular memorabilia in Australia.

"Caps are very popular because they look great and are very small and you can get a glass cabinet and display them whereas the blazers, in a way, are too big to display," Williamson said.

He explains that Attree is selling because he is getting old and many collectors will do that.

"He's had a stroke, he's quite elderly, he's been an avid collector for a long time and, like a lot of collectors, he knows his material best and he wants some control of how it is sold," Williamson said.

The Baggy Green: The pride, passion and history of Australia's sporting icon. By Michael Fahey and Mike Coward, published by The Cricket Publishing Company. Rrp $35

The Baggy Green exhibition featuring 42 caps is on at the Bradman Museum, Bowral

Courtesy, The Australian  Original Article