Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: A Case of Curious Collecting

At the Potter & Potter Auctions sale, a massive six-sheet poster for the 1922 silent film Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore in the title role realized the top price of $9,000. While extensively repaired, the auction house notes that it may be the only copy in existence. A one-sheet rotogravure poster for the same film sold for $3,600. Other film- and theater-related lots included:

• a full-color poster for the French version of the William Gillette play Sherlock Holmes from around 1908, which sold for $5,760
• a rare copy of the original program for the 1925 film adaptation of The Lost World ($2,250)
• a near-complete set of Swedish posters for the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of films (1943–46), which sold for $1,560

There was much of interest for the Jeremy Brett collector: a brown cloth dressing gown worn by Brett as Holmes in at least one episode of the 1984–94 television series, which sold for $8,400; and the tweed jacket worn by Brett during his depiction of Holmes’s struggle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem ($4,500). Brett’s personal prescription reading glasses realized $5,280, over estimates of just $200–300, and a poster for Brett’s 1961 stint in Hamlet at the Strand Theatre in London sold for $3,600. A lot including about 80 volumes from Brett’s personal library made $2,400, and a huge group of promotional stills from the Granada films and television series (more than 2,800 photographs) sold for $2,160.

Among the books, the top price went to a first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), which sold for $8,400. A complete set of John Ruyle’s “Turlock Loams” parodies and a full run of The Tantalus, comprising 173 publications in all plus associated ephemera, sold for $6,000. This is believed to be the only complete set of these publications in private hands. Seven 1910s pirated editions of Conan Doyle’s works, including The White Company, Micah Clarke, A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of the Four, sold unexpectedly well, reaching $6,000 against estimates of just $500–700. The volume of Lippincott’s Magazine for 1890, which contained the first appearance of The Sign of the Four, made $5,520.

Two issues of Collier’s featuring Holmes stories (August 15, 1908, and November 22, 1913) as illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele, both in original condition and not removed from bound volumes, sold for $3,120. A nearly complete run of Holmes stories serialized in the Chicago Tribune between June and October 1911 reached the same price. A set of The Poison Belt in its original five-part form in The Strand Magazine (one part from the U.K. edition and the other four from the U.S. edition) sold for $3,000, while The Lost World in its eight original parts from the U.K. edition of The Strand sold for $2,640.

A set of twenty miniature Sherlockian blank books with a wooden display case issued by the Bo Press in 2015 sold for $3,840; the books’ titles are those canonically written by Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, and Colonel Sebastian Moran, including Holmes’s Practical Handbook of Bee Culture and Upon the Tracing of Footsteps and Moriarty’s Dynamics of an Asteroid. A group of framed pencil sketches of Sherlockian actors by Deirdre Keetley used for a commemorative “Portrayals of Sherlock Holmes” plate in 1990 sold for $2,500. A 1950s metal street sign for Baker Street fetched $2,160, and a group of proof sheets for Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics with Sherlock Holmes references made $2,000.

Two lots of Conan Doyle correspondence failed to find buyers on sale day: one group comprised correspondence between the author and his acting secretary, Charles Ashton Jonson, during Conan Doyle’s lecture tour to Africa in 1929, and the other included eight letters and a note from Conan Doyle to his secretary, Constance Holland, during his lecture tour to Scandinavia and Holland, also in 1929.

Christopher Brink, director of Potter & Potter’s fine books and manuscripts department, said after the sale that “part one of Bob Hess’s Sherlock collection was a smashing success. Bidders came out in mass and competitively bid all morning, blowing past our presale high estimate. We are excited for the next installment early next year.”

Robert Hess, describing himself as a “Sherlockeologist,” maintains that “the thrill is in the search … I’ve had great fun searching and finding many rare and interesting Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes artifacts, ephemera, and memorabilia, but the most important result of my collecting is the many, many friends I have made along the way.”