'Museum Worthy' Photo

In this continuing series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, we often see that photos can fetch a nice price, as in the previous post $65 per Square Inch of Photo, and more often see that autographed photos can fetch twice a nice price.

A case in point is the composite image shown on the left. Titled 'Nottingham 1936 Chess Photo - Signed by Alekhine, Capablanca, Lasker & More!', it sold for somewhere between $4000 and $6500, 'Best offer accepted'.

The description started, 'Being offered is perhaps the most important and most prized piece of chess history in existence! What you see before you is the official Nottingham 1936 International Chess Tournament Photo signed by ALL 15 participants as well as tournament organizer J.N. Derbyshire.'

It continued,

According to the unofficial Chessmetrics ratings, the tournament was (as of March 2005) one of only five tournaments in history that had the top eight players in the world playing, and was (in terms of the leading players playing) the third strongest in history. All of the top twelve players on Chessmetrics' August 1936 rating list competed in the tournament except for numbers nine and ten (Andor Lilienthal and Paul Keres). The event is also notable for being Lasker's last major event, and for Botvinnik achieving the first Soviet success outside the Soviet Union."

The photo itself is roughly 6"x8" and is in excellent condition. It has been stored in a thick, UV resistant display case that wonderfully displays both sides of the piece. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a museum worthy piece that would be the crown jewel of even the most discriminating of chess memorabilia collections.

For the previous autographed item in 'Top eBay Chess Items', see Staunton and the First World Junior Championship.