Bidding for Sir Donald Bradman’s first baggy green cap has ended well below expectations and for much less than the record for one belonging to the legendary Australian cricketer.
Key points:
- Sir Donald Bradman made his debut for Australia in 1928
- He gave the cap he wore to Peter Dunham
- It is being sold to pay Dunham’s creditors
An online auction for the 1928 cap ended at 7:00pm ACDT, with a $391,500 bid from someone with the initials S.C. from the Brisbane suburb of Greenslopes.
Auctioneers had hoped to attract between $1 million and $2 million for the cap, which is being sold to pay creditors of the owner, former bankrupt Adelaide accountant and convicted fraudster Peter Dunham.
Gavin Dempsey from auction house Pickles said he was “awaiting instruction” on the sale.
The record for a Bradman cap sold at auction is $425,000 in 2003.
The current record price for a baggy green is just over $1 million, for Shane Warne’s Test cap.
All the bidders for Bradman’s cap were from Australia.
The cap is not allowed to leave the country because it is covered by the federal Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act.
Bradman received his first baggy green well before the modern tradition of Test cricketers retaining a single cap throughout their careers was established.
He made his Test debut against England in Brisbane in 1928, scoring 18 and 1 — a return that would see him dropped for the only time in his career, before he was selected again two matches later and rewarded selectors with a maiden century.
Dunham, who is now in prison, was gifted the cap when he was a young neighbour of Bradman’s in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs.
Bradman had been friends with Dunham’s mother, who died in 1964.
The cap had been kept at the State Library of South Australia as part of its Bradman Collection.
