Sir Donald Bradman’s first Australian baggy green cap up for auction after fraud trial

Donald Bradman’s first Australian baggy green cap, which he gifted to a friend now in jail for fraud, is up for auction.

The Australian cricket legend’s cap from his debut Test series in 1928-29 will be sold on Thursday.

Bradman gave the cap to a family friend, Peter Dunham of Adelaide, in the 1950s. Dunham, an accountant, was in May this year jailed for eight years and two months for scamming $1.3 million from investors.

Some of Dunham’s victims sought access to Bradman’s cap to help pay off the accountant’s debts.

Dunham faced the South Australian District Court initially charged with 37 theft and deception charges spanning 2008 to 2015.

Just before his trial, 76-year-old Dunham pleaded guilty to many of the charges on the condition others were dropped.

The court was told he had repaid about $800,000.

District Court Judge Paul Muscat described Dunham’s offending as calculated, deliberate and repetitive and imposed a non-parole period of 41/2 years.

Dunham’s estate was bankrupted, with Bradman’s cap to be sold on Thursday at pickles.com.au under instructions from the trustee, Oracle Insolvency Services.

The baggy green has been on display for the past 17 years, loaned by Dunham to the Bradman collection at the State Library of South Australia.

Bradman was presented with it before Australia took on England at Brisbane’s Exhibition Ground in November 1928. A number of the legend’s baggy green caps have previously been auctioned, with his 1948 edition from the famous Ashes tour of England selling for $425,000 in 2003.

Bradman’s Test debut cap is listed under the Cultural Heritage Act and can’t be removed from Australia

The record price for baggy green is Shane Warne’s Test cap, which fetched $1,007,500 when bought by the Commonwealth Bank in January.