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A vast collection of chess memorabilia, including some rare antiquarian books, souvenirs from the 1972 ‘Match of the Century’, and considered to be the largest and most important of its kind in private hands, went under the hammer recently at Sotheby’s in London. The online auction was timed to run for the duration of the Candidates Tournament in Cyprus – and when the sale closed, the lots all not only far exceeded their estimated values, a few select items even fetched remarkable record prices.
The collection belonged to Lothar Maximilian Lorenz Schmid (1928–2013), the revered German Grandmaster, renowned bibliophile and esteemed arbiter/diplomat. He’s best remembered for being the chief arbiter of the world chess championship match in Reykjavik between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. He was intimately involved in the struggle to keep the volatile American genius at the board, even when Fischer’s unreasonable and erratic behaviour seemed certain to see the match abandoned.
After the hullabaloo of the first two games, when Fischer trailed 0-2 after defaulting Game 2 and known to have booked his flight back to New York, Schmid was the authority figure respected by both players able to physically force them down by the shoulders for Game 3, with the clear instruction: “Play now!”. The rest, as they say, is history: Fischer won that third game, his first ever against a possibly distracted Spassky, and with it seized a psychological initiative he never let go of, going on to be crowned the eleventh world champion after his Russian foe resigned the 21st game of the match on 1st September 1972.
Apart from having great diplomatic skills and being a respected arbiter, Schmid was also a compulsive chess collector, addicted to it from the early age of 15. His lifetime was full of collecting a treasure trove of chess books and paraphernalia associated with the game’s rich heritage. He was obsessed with filling gaps in his collection – so much so that it was said by many if he discovered someone had a book he didn’t have, he just wouldn’t rest until it was his. Schmid died in 2013, and his son Bernhard recalled his father’s passion for the things he had collected, saying: “He was crazy for the game and everything to do with it. He travelled to five continents to buy up artefacts he had fallen in love with, once to South America for a book he told us children was as expensive as a house.”
For the past decade or so, his family have been selling off the vast collection originally stored at their father’s sprawling house (with its heavily reinforced floors due to the sheer volume of books to support, he once matter-of-factly told me!) in Bamberg, southern Germany.
The main antiquarian highlight of the auction at Sotheby’s proved to be Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (‘Repetition of Loves and the Art of Chess’). Written towards the end of the 15th century by Luis Ramírez de Lucena, during the reign of Queen Isabella, when the queen became the most powerful piece due to Isabella’s influence in the Spanish court. It was the first book to describe the rules and strategy of chess, and is one of only ten surviving copies in the world.
[Picture: At £179,200, Lucena’s 15th-century work is now the most expensive ever chess book.]
Sotheby’s estimate price on this rarity was set at £70,000-£100,000. It in fact went for a new record for a chess book of £179,200! Other rarities among the collection that fetched high prices included von der Lasa’s copy of Jacobus de Cessolis’s Schachzabelbuch from 1483 (£96,000), various editions of Damiano’s Libro da imparare giocare a scacchi, Ruy Lopez’s manual in different languages, and some early Philidors.
This was only a fraction of Schmid’s formidable collection of rare chess books. It seems that a great bulk of his library was already sold by the family around 2016 through a series of auctions by A. Klittich-Pfankuch GmbH & Co, a specialist antiquarian auction house in Brunswick, Germany.
Another unique rarity in the Sotheby’s auction was a group of eight manuscript volumes by Emanuel Lasker, the longest reigning world champion for 27 years. The volumes include Lasker’s personal records of his games, as well as handwritten manuscripts for lectures and books.
However, the handwritten item of world champions that generated the most interest among the ordinary club and tournament players to major chess collectors alike proved to be Lot. 67 – absolutely no sense of romanticism here from Sotheby’s, by making it a very chessic Lot. 64! Number 67 was the original scoresheets (signed by both Fischer and Spassky) and adjournment envelope from Game 17 at Reykjavik, which had an estimate of £5,000-£7,000 and shocked everyone by being sold for a record £140,800!
This now makes it the most expensive scoresheet in the history of our long and storied game. However, nothing is known about the buyer of this remarkable treasure from a pivotal moment in chess history, as the terms and conditions of the auction house meant all the buyers would remain anonymous. But the sale does raises some interesting questions.
Firstly, if someone’s handwriting says a lot about their character and personality, then the scoresheets show the mercurial Bobby Fischer is perhaps an even bigger enigma than we already thought. There, plain for all to see was his unmistakable penmanship – in old school English descriptive notation, as was his preference – that has an almost a child-like innocence to it. It starts almost semi-legible, but, within the space of a dozen moves or so, descends into a primeval scrawl so unreadable you need to send it to your nearest pharmacist to decipher the moves! By contrast, Boris Spassky’s handwriting – in algebraic notation – is so neat, clear and clipped with orderly spacing throughout; the sort of scoresheet that you could well imagine veteran game-inputer John Saunders awarding a gold star!
And this brings about something of a quandary: how did Schmid acquire the scoresheets for Game 17? It seems the reason is that the players left the scoresheets and the adjournment paraphernalia behind after the game, and the diligent chief arbiter could well have picked them up ‘en prise’. Another plausible though fanciful hypotheses has been put forward from veteran Guardian chess correspondent Leonard Barden, also a good friend of Schmid, who suggested that the then FIDE president, Dr. Max Euwe, knowing that the chief arbiter was an avid chess collector, turned a blind eye as a ‘gift’ for his strenuous efforts in keeping the match alive.
The auction of the Game 17 scoresheets begs the question of the biggest mystery of all – what happened to the scoresheets for all the other 20 games, including Fischer’s defaulted Game 2? The Icelanders only have the carbon copies which were in the possession of Schmid for many years before he returned them to Iceland in 2002. According to Lothar himself, most of the originals went to the players (Game 17 being an obvious exception). Those carbon copies in Iceland are displayed in various museums – where even now, they might have to be reappraised for insurance purposes following Sotheby’s auction and that record price.
[Chief arbiter Lothar Schmid pictured left at the 1972 FIDE World Championship, where he played a key role keeping the match alive.]
Today the accepted practice is that the original scoresheet top copies for invitational events belong to the organisers and the players get the carbon copies. However, things were a bit murky back in ’72 – the first FIDE world championship match to be held outside of Russia – and, indeed, retaining ownership of the original scoresheet would have been something of a Fischer trait.
In an exchange of emails with author and historian John Donaldson, he points out that when Fischer’s storage locker was famously auctioned off, he complained bitterly about losing the scoresheets from his 1971 exhibition tour of Argentina (the organisers provided those who played Bobby with carbon scoresheets and Fischer was given the white, top sheet). Donaldson ponders: “Wouldn’t he have mentioned the Reykjavik scoresheets?” He also mentions, en passant, that he got to see Spassky’s personal archive in Paris several years ago – and there were no scoresheets there from the 1972 match.
There was even wild rumours circulating for years Donaldson also mentions, that an “anonymous Icelander” once approached a leading FIDE executive wondering if they would like to buy the original scoresheets from the 1972 world championship match to display in their archives. Yet another mystery to be solved. Whatever happened to the rest of those original scoresheets, which are a vital part of chess history, Donaldson and myself came to the same conclusion: hopefully the record price fetched for the Game 17 scoresheets will soon see the others finally surface – so what price now for the scoresheets for that crucial match-changing Game 3, the masterpiece of Game 6, or even the title-winning Game 21?
Well, so much for the background, mystery and lore behind the handwritten and autographed scoresheets and associated paraphernalia from that Cold War clash between Fischer and Spassky in Reykjavik, but what is the value of the actual Game 17 itself? I explained in my November 2024 article for this magazine, ‘Mr Fischer’s Chair’, that my personal favourite from Fischer-Spassky is the epic Game 13 Alekhine’s Defence battle.
Game 17 was not overly significant, and not many would select it as their favourite game of the match. However, I can tell readers that it just happens to be a particular favourite of legendary film actor Sir Michael Caine – not a lot of people know that!
I say Michael Caine’s favourite game, but it is actually his on-screen alter-ego Harry Brown’s favourite game, the titular anti-hero of his 2009 movie. He plays a geriatric vigilante, a retired Royal Marine who spends his lonely life between the hospital, where his beloved wife is terminally ill, a quiet pint in his local with his only friend Len (David Bradley), and playing chess. He’s a strategic thinker, is our Harry, and he’s deeply troubled by the drug-selling teenage gang terrorising the locals of his rundown London council estate that even the local police appear powerless to act against.
But when the bodies mysteriously start to pile up, Detective Inspector Alice Frampton’s (Emily Mortimer) suspicions turns to seventy-something Harry, who has emerged from the darkness of his military past serving in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Always be wary of the quiet ones, thinks Alice, so she pays a visit to Harry’s home, and seeing he has a chessboard out with a position on it, but no opponent, asks: “No one to play with?”
Harry explains that he likes “studying the grandmaster strategies from the books” and this was a game between Fischer and Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972. And even using the correct Slovenian ‘PEERTS’ enunciation, he adds: “Fischer opened with what’s known as a Pirc Defence; he’d never used this before. Black concedes the centre of the board in the expectations of counterplay. Spassky was a rook to knight up when...anyway, Fischer won [the match].”
So lets blow the bloody doors off and take a closer look at Harry’s favourite game from Fischer-Spassky ’72, that now commands the record for the most expensive scoresheet in the history of our game at £140,800, and with a couple of added nuggets thrown in from talks I’ve had during my super-tournament travels with good friend Lubosh Kavalek and also Lothar Schmid.
The above story is reproduced from Chess Magazine June/2026, with kind permission.
CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by IM Richard Palliser and Matt Read.
The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organises the London Chess Classic.
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