The Brits have always been a bit obsessive about their sports. How else to explain the befuddling rules of cricket? It is therefore fitting that one of the great gaming shrines would crop up in the heart of merry old England. Manfred Schotten Antiques, a shop just as farcically Byronic as its name suggests, is tucked behind a cobblestoned sidewalk in the Oxfordshire hamlet of Burford, about 80 miles outside London. While some antiques dealers might dabble in recreational odds and ends, Schotten is the rare store that specializes in them, stocking old cricket bats, tennis racquets, riding gear, polo mallets, billiards cues, and European footballs that look as if they've been kicked from Norwich to Cardiff and back.

"I play golf and used to go fly-fishing," says owner Manfred Schotten, who, two decades ago, recast his antiques business as a destination for gentlemanly vestiges of the sporting life. Schotten initially bought a few cast-off rods and clubs and set them up in a corner of his shop, but within five years, athletic gear had taken over the whole arena.

It was a pragmatic choice as much as a personal one—the sporting goods, you see, were outselling everything else. "I suppose it was around the same time Ralph Lauren became so popular," Schotten says, delivering his theory on the rise of this particular brand of collecting in an amused, slightly satirical tone. The American sportswear monolith notwithstanding, Schotten was able to craft his own lucrative saddle-and-sports-ephemera trade. This is, after all, where one comes to find a handmade and signed Hugh Philp wood-shafted golf club, circa 1840, albeit when one has roughly $23,000 to spend. Vintage clubs by other specialty makers such as McEwan, Tom Morris, Jackson of Perth, Hendry & Bishop, and Brown's also swing through from time to time.

Golfing pieces from the 1870s through the 1920s tend to be more popular with collectors who covet equipment they can still use on the course, while others scout rarer patent clubs—unusual models that never quite caught on, like a Giant Cardinal niblick or a rake iron. "It looks like a rake, but upside down, and it's used in water," Schotten explains. "A niblick has a lot of loft, like a wedge. A giant niblick is really big. The surface area is very large."

Trout rods from makers like Hardy or Leonard dating back to the 19th century are holy grails for fly fishermen in search of working casters. "I think at the moment," Schotten says, "we probably have a lot more interest than usual in equestrian and hunting items, because foxhunting in England has been banned." He also offers up boyish collectibles like a mid-20th-century foosball table, priced at $7,800. "It's the type of table that was used in cafés in Europe," he adds. "It has aluminum players, and the beechwood table has got a sloping playing surface, which keeps the ball on the move."

Since a number of entertainment figures—including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie—have taken third or fourth homes in the Cotswolds, the shop does a fair business with Hollywood clientele. Members of Parliament and the royal family, and "quite a few people who annually appear on a rich list," are just as apt to be on the main floor or downstairs in the catacomb-like basement. For those who can't make the pilgrimage over hill and vale, items are listed on schotten.com and can be shipped globally. Jerseys not included. —SARA JAMES

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