Sheffield token and badge collection fetches five times auction estimate

The tokens and checks from liquorice allsort maker Bassetts, based in Owlerton, were collected by city man Tim Hale. They were in a 30 token set which also included items from C Booth and Son cutlers.

The set had an estimate starting at £140 but fetched £682 and sold to a Yorkshire collector at an auction by Dix Noonan Webb. The set was part of a 60-lot collection from Mr Hale, aged 68, who has been collecting Sheffield memorabilia since his teens.

He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2014, making his collection difficult to manipulate. He told the Dixon Noonan Webb website: “People have asked me whether selling the collection is making me feel sad.

"But, you know, it isn't – at least not yet! I'm pleased that many fellow collectors will have the opportunity to add new items to their own collections, and I'm pleased that I'll get a little more room space back, as is my wife!

“I am very pleased with the outcome of the sale and the interest that my collection attracted. Dix Noonan Webb did a very professional job promoting the sale to all corner of the globe, and I have have just sent a donation of £500 to Parkinson's UK to support them in their vital work.

"I hope that the new owners of my tokens and medals enjoy them as much as I did and the stories that make Sheffield so great continue to be told.”

His Sheffield Tokens and Paranumismatica achieved a total of £9,833. It included badges won by Jack Thompson, who played inside forward for Sheffield Wednesday from July 1933 to April 1946, then for Doncaster Rovers, May 1946 to June 1948.

Other items included historical medals from the visit of Queen Victoria to Sheffield to open the New Town Hall in 1897. Items sold to bidders from the UK, Europe and North America.

Dix Noonan Webb’s head of coin department Peter Preston-Morley said: “There was keen demand for some areas of Tim’s collection, particularly for the trade tokens and for some of the medals with an interesting story behind them, such as that for the great Sheffield flood of 1864.”