IN A STORMING FINISH to the Vectis 2011 Military, Civilian Figures, Equipment and Accessories sale season it was yet again the plastics sections which led the way, achieving some stunning prices. A Trojan “Half Moon” display card made £1100, 2 x uncatalogued Trojan half sets £2600 and £2500 apiece, a scarce issue boxed Windmill by FG Taylor made an amazing [...]
BY R. T. CLAUS The Graf Zeppelin was the world’s most successful airship. In spite of having only an 80 mph cruising speed this huge craft was able, during 9 years of service beginning in 1928, to circle the globe, make 590 flights, and travel over one million miles. The Luftschiff had truly mind boggling statistics. It was 776 ft. [...]
PITTSBURGH – “Terrific!” That’s how Ray Haradin, owner of Old Toy Soldier Auctions, described the interest in his late-spring auction featuring the Don Darnieder collection of military figures. The 1,095-lot sale, which was also bolstered by Part II of the Fred Wehr collection and other select properties, was 100% sold and totaled $254,000. “The Internet was very active, with around [...]
THE FIRST VECTIS Military, Civilian Figures, Equipment and Accessories Sale of 2011 including Part 1 of the Nils Fischer Britains Collection was held on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. The sale was an overwhelming success with 96% of the 925 lots on offer being sold and the sale grossing just short of £190K. For the third sale in a row Vectis [...]
BY HENRY I. KURTZ IN THE AFTERMATH of World War II, Curt Wennberg, a Swede, and Fred Winkler, a German expatriate—who had previously developed a line of model warships produced in England—teamed up with Holger Eriksson, the Swedish master designer of fine quality miniature soldiers, to create the Authenticast line of toy soldiers for the Comet Metal Products Company in [...]
VECTIS WILL BE offering at auction The Best Britains Reference Collection you are ever likely to see. The Nils Fischer Collection from Sweden contains some extremely rare/unique prototypes and limited editions. The sale will take place over two days Tuesday and Wednesday, March 29 and 30, 2011 at Thornaby, Stockton on Tees, England. The collection spans from vintage Britains through [...]
BY JACK HERBERT The time has come, I think, for a word or two about our current Toy Auction Catalogues from the major houses. There was a time, about twenty-five years or so ago, when the Antique Toy Catalogues were little more than simple listings. In heft, they resembled pamphlets. They could easily be lost in the pages of your [...]
Go to Sotheby’s. Do not pass Go. But do see some of the earliest surviving Monopoly game sets, as well as the rest of the celebrated Forbes Toy Collection. The Collection comes to auction at Sotheby’s on December 17th. Assembled by legendary collection Malcolm Fores and his sons over a period of nearly four decades, the toys include the largest [...]
BY HENRY I. KURTZ PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE FORBES COLLECTION Nestled in the Forbes Building on lower Fifth Avenue in New York City, along with Forbes Magazine and other Forbes publications, is one of the finest toy soldier displays to be found anywhere. The exhibition, which has some 5,000 figures, is what remains of a larger collection of about 100,000 [...]
NEW HOPE, Pa. – Last May the Old Salem Toy Museum in Old Salem, N.C., closed its doors for the last time on a spectacular collection of antique toys, holiday items, dolls’ houses and miniatures, and other children’s playthings, some dating to as early as 225 A.D. The collection was built over many years by businessman Thomas A. Gray and [...]
