Tennis
Anyone?
Sport 'Nets' Many Collectibles
By Robert Reed
In
the wide world of sports tennis has been relatively under collected
in the past, but it has a winner's potential in the future.
Today tennis "meets all the criteria" of a popular sporting
collectible according to author Robert Everitt. Writing in the very
comprehensive volume, Racket Sports Collectibles, Everitt notes
tennis has the heritage, the players, and the coverage. Not surprisingly
it also has the memorabilia or what some would call the stuff.
Fans of paper collectibles can find programs, tickets, catalogs,
magazines, and books. Others might look for vintage rackets, clothing,
containers, and other equipment. Additionally there are photographs,
autographs, and even trophies of past tennis glory.
Historically tennis can be traced back to 12th century France where
it was practiced in a more primitive form. During the latter part
of the 19th century it was revised and refined in England into the
'new' game of lawn tennis.
 Accounts
vary but most credit Major Walter Wingfield with a patented game
of tennis in 1874 with giving the sport a major boost. Most of Wingfield's
rules were accepted although the idea of an hourglass field was
soon changed to a rectangular field when tournament play began in
the late 1870s.
The first United States Open tennis tournament took place in 1881
at Newport, Rhode Island. During that decade the sport was popular
enough to prompt the mass production of tennis player figurines
in Germany. Typically the bisque figures were in full uniform that
period including high socks, draped collar, and cap.
By the 1890s even the awards for winning tennis were getting more
elaborate. An example was the Lawn Tennis Championship of Ireland.
The winner received a silver tray with scrolled leaves engraved
by L. West of London. In recent years the 30-inch wide original
sold at Leland's Auctions in the United States for more than $5,000.
An enterprising American named Dwight Davis organized the first
Davis Cup tennis competition in 1900. The U.S. team defeated the
British team during the first year of the event held in Boston.
Today programs of the early Davis Cup championships are highly prized.
A string-bound Davis Cup Souvenir program booklet of 1913 recently
fetched several hundreds dollars at a major auction house.
 Tennis
rackets are also making a 'racket' with collectors too.
On occasion early rackets still turn up including those made by
AW. Gamage of London in the 1890s and those made in the early 1900s
by Wright and Ditson of Boston. Another favorite with collectors
is the Dayton brand wooden tennis racket of the 1920s.
"The condition of a (early) racket is not everything to a collector,
but the appearance of it does help to persuade someone it is worth
investing in," notes author Everitt. "Very often, a racket's
strings can be in terrible condition, but the piece has some other
rare and desirable detail, which makes their condition of little
importance."
The second half of the 20th century saw a gradual move from the
traditional wooden tennis racket to rackets of metal and later graphite
and additional materials. Today many surviving wooden rackets in
good condition are considered both decorative and collectible.
Tennis moved to the silver screen early in the 1920s with an instructional
movie titled The Art of Tennis. The film featured female members
of the British Davis Cup Team and their French challengers. One
of the stars was French great Susanne Lengelen and her partner Elizabeth
Ryan. Posters of the movie made by the Parkstone Film Company are
treasured today.
 Tennis
players in general and women player in particular were often memorialized
on magazine covers of the early 20th century. Notable among them
were Collier's, the Sunday Magazine of the New York Tribune, and
the Saturday Evening Post.
During the 1920s tennis star Helen Wills made the cover of Time
magazine twice, and books like Tennis in Baltimore by Frank Roberts
were favored reading. In 1931 the Lawn Tennis Association published
the unique volume, Fifty Years of Lawn Tennis in the United States.
The hardcover edition reviewed the previous five decades of the
remarkable sport in this country.
Tennis was back in the movies during the 1940s when tennis star
Alice Marble appeared in the film Tennis in Rhythm. Previously Marble
had been featured on the cover of Life magazine. By post World War
years of the 1940s tennis balls for the popular game were regularly
being sold some places in cans, and eventually the containers became
a fond collectible.
In recent years the Official Guide to Flea Market Prices by Harry
Rinker devoted a section to tennis ball cans alone. Rinker noted
that previously tennis balls were sold in bags or cardboard boxes
before the innovation by Wilson. A good example of such cans in
prized and unopened condition, would be the Wilson Match-Point container
produced in 1945.
 A
breakfast cereal gave unique recognition to the sport of tennis
early in the 1950s, not to mention the black female athlete. In
1952 Wheaties featured a select group of professional athletes on
the backs of cereal boxes to cutout as trading cards. In the group
a number of baseball players, golfer Sam Snead, and tennis sensation
Athea Gibson. A few years later Gibson also made the cover of both
Time magazine and Sports Illustrated, but the earlier achievement
on the cereal boxes had far greater impact on the youngsters of
that generation.
The enduring Arthur Ash became a tennis legend in the 1960s and
was fittingly on the cover of many magazines including Sports Illustrated
and Life. Early in the 1970s professional tennis got a tremendous
boost when Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs staged the grand Battle
of the Sexes before a nationwide television audience. Tennis became
a child's game too during the 1970s when XV Productions marketed
Set Point - The Tennis Strategy Game and Parker Brothers offered
a game simply named Tennis.
Eventually collectors moved on to even more exotic tennis collectibles
such as the game worn jacket of John McEnroe and action photographs
of Boris Becker or Martina Navratilova. Autographs of tennis wonders
of the past as William "Big Bill" Tilden were treasured,
and the even the signatures of more contemporary idols Steffi Graf
and Monica Seles seriously sought.
Tennis is "another sport where the collectibles are starting
to command increased attention," note Don Johnson and Ellen
Schroy the co-authors of Warman's Flea Market Price Guide, 2nd edition.
They suggest looking for ephemera and equipment endorsed by famous
players such as a Poncho Gonzales tennis ball can or a color illustrated
Maureen Connolly tennis racket.
Recommended reading: Racket Sports Collectibles by Robert Everitt
(Schiffer Publishing).
©
2009 Mountain States Collector
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