Latest News & Auction Insights

Our April Toy Sale going like clockwork

20th April 2024

Our April Toy Sale going like clockwork Image

With the second largest Toy Sale we have hosted here at Hartleys, the pre-sale client excitement was palpable, with enthusiastic phone calls, inquisitive emails and plenty of personal messages sent about the auction.  The day was made up of a whopping 1047 lots ranging from antique toys over 150 years old, to popular iconic pieces from the late 20th century. You start to wonder where else you would find a finely crafted porcelain doll fixed with paperweight eyes, next to Pokemon cards and boxed Lego?

The day started with the dolls and teddies, sections which have always been a staple of the Toy Sale and although might not be as strong as their height in the late 1980s, the market is still great and a pleasure to be a part of.  An early surprise came amid the dolls when an obvious French doll rocketed past the estimate to make £800, although her mark left a few questions as to the maker, two buyers had obviously made up their minds and were intent on owning her.  We had a huge collection of modern and antique dolls house furniture and accessories which were hotly sought after throughout the 105-lot doll section, with hopeful buyers wanting them to dress the doll houses they already owned.  The best of the section came with lot 40, a rare Simon & Halbig doll from the 1358 mould that marched past the bottom estimate to make £1,100. Though a quality maker, Simon & Halbig are not always the best priced dolls, but this mould represented a rare attempt to represent the features of the nationality depicted by a doll, rather than manufacturers who at the time simply changed the colour pallet used to paint their standard doll heads. The teddy bears sold with typical gusto, with plenty of Steiff bears holding their usual limelight, but the best within the plush lots came with a lovely old centre seam bear, made around 1904, that although had lost much hair over the years (something I can relate to) sold well at £1,200.

Next came our miscellaneous toys section which started nicely with a short but good quality section of rocking horses, lead by a furlong or two by lot 153, a late 19th century G & J Lines carved horse that could fit round five children (with good balance) that made £850. The 1980s were well represented with a single and unboxed Star Wars figure of Luke Skywalker in a Stormtrooper disguise that made £130, a boxed set of Action Man underwater explorer clothing that gained £130 and a Transformers Decepticon Leader where Megatron folds into a Walther P-38 pistol that made £200. In fact, the last item was part of a 14 lot Transformer section that made a collective £1,560. Bolstering the section in terms of lot numbers and sale results was a huge collection of Lego items, from two separate owners that sold wonderfully with high levels of competition throughout, the highest price ironically being found with one of the few unboxed lots when a group of buildings made £460.

After a very successful engineering section last year, we were able to muster together another section of good quality steam powered items, with well known maker’s such as Mamod and Wilesco, as well as some amazing “scratch built” models. The best of the section came predictably with the highest estimated items, when lot 378 Fulgurex/Aster Gauge 1 LNER A4 locomotive Mallard made £1,850 and lot 377, a Maxwell Hemmens Live steam Fowler Showman's engine, that appeared to have never been fired, made £2,250.

The tin plate section was better than ever and held at its heart a brilliant single owner collection of vintage robots. These wonderfully stylish robotic creations dressed the front of our catalogue and included some real rarities, such as a 1940s Atomic Man that made £320 and an extremely rare (and arguably the first of all toy robots) Kosugi KT Toys pre-war Lilliput clockwork Robot that made a stonking £1,850; great for a robot only a few inches tall.

When people think about toys and toy auctions, diecast cars inevitably spring to mind. This sale was no different with just shy of 250 diecast vehicles. Typically, the best prices come from older boxed Dinky cars, but breaking from tradition, some of the more modern items in the section hit the highest notes. These came in the form of high-quality display only models, never really intended as toys, but rather engineering toys produced to high specifications for car and model enthusiasts. One CMC models 1:18th Porsche 901 made £320, a Minichamps 1:6 Scale Motorcycle Brough Superior SS100 T.E. Lawrence reached £320, and a Minichamps Le-Mans 4.5 litre Blower Bentley peaked the section at £340.

Lastly, we sold the trains, starting with the smaller scale which had a much larger than normal N-gauge section and ending with the 0-gauge and “large scale”. The sold rate was extremely high throughout all gauges, seeing arguably better results within the 0-gauge than we have seen over the last couple of years. The best of the small scale came from a Hornby live steam 00 gauge scarce additional Flying Scotsman locomotive that made £290, and from the “old” 0-gauge we gained £340 for a Carrette clockwork Floor Train Caledonian Railway Advertising model. Following on from the modern lots in the diecast section we had a plethora of high prices amongst the “modern” large scale, with £280 for San Cheng brass 0-gauge Castle Class locomotive, £280 for a Corgi Bassett-Lowke Gauge 0 Royal Scot locomotive, £340 for a Corgi Bassett-Lowke live steam LMS red Mogul and £360 for four LGB coaches that came as part of a huge single owner collection of large scale LGB trains.

The sale ended with an incredible 97% sold rate and a collective hammer total of within touching range of our upper estimate at £86,000. Every time we have a Toy Sale the office is filled with laughter, and it is a sale which is a genuine pleasure to handle.  As I sat on the rostrum selling, upstairs in our toy store we already had items from ten different vendors ready for our October auction and would merrily welcome more lots in between now and our closing date on August 30th.