03 March 2013

1972 Fischer - Spassky Poster

In this fortnightly series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, Fischer items are often the most attractive choice. My previous post, Fischer's Doodle, featured autographed tickets to the 1972 Fischer - Spassky title match, and this current post features a poster, pictured at the left, from the same match.

The title of the item was 'Fischer-Spassky Chess World championship game 1972 original silk printed poster', and it sold for US $521 after nine bids from two bidders. Someone really wanted that poster! The item's description simply repeated the title and there were no other remarks worth saving for posterity.

Unfortunately, the photo of the poster wasn't very good and my attempts to make it more attractive might have done even more harm. For a better image, see Chess Posters at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the national library of the Netherlands. The KB also houses the second largest collection of chess books in the world.

2 comments:

Cory Salter said...

I was the one who purchased that, and I love it! I would be happy to take a better photo of it in its new frame if you'd like. Funny I came across this post so randomly! You wouldn't happen to have a ticket to game 6 would you?

Mark Weeks said...

Congratulations on winning the auction (even if it was three years ago)! I'll decline the offer for a better photo, unless there's a detail that you would like to share. I fixed the link to the KB copy, which had broken and which should be sufficient for most purposes.

As for the ticket, I'm not a collector myself, so I can't help. I've seen many of the 1972 match tickets offered on eBay, including complete sets for all games, but I've always been somewhat skeptical about their authenticity. They would have been easy to print long after the match ended. Do you think they are all genuine?