A football trophy handed out 145 years ago is set to go under the hammer.
An FA Cup medal was awarded to Wanderers FC in 1877 after winning the second of three successive cups.
The match was the sixth final of the world’s oldest football competition, and the fourth time the Wanderers had won the cup.
The medal is inscribed ‘Football Association Challenge Cup, Wanderers 1877′ and it’s expected to sell for £6,000 when it goes up for auction next week.
The team’s captain, Charles William Alcock, is the founder of the FA Cup tournament, making the medal a real piece of footballing history.
Alastair McCrea is head of entertainment and sporting memorabilia at Ewbank’s Auctioneers in Surrey, where the medal is being sold.
He said: ‘An early Cup winner’s medal from the world’s oldest national football tournament is rare enough indeed.
‘But to have one with such close associations with the founding father of the competition and the top team in the game at the time is as good as it gets.’
The Wanderers began as Forest Football Club in 1859, and it’s thought they changed their name in 1864 because the club never had its own home ground.
In total the club won the competition five times, including their hat trick from 1876-1878. Only one other club managed that feat: Blackburn Rovers lifted the cup three times in a row between 1884-1886.
At the time, the rule was that any team which won three times in a row could keep the cup permanently – but Mr Alcock returned it on the condition that the rule was changed, so no club could ever keep it.
The Wanderers eventually folded in 1884 after losing players to new up-and-coming clubs.
The medal has a pre-sale estimate of £4,000-£6,000.
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