VINELAND, N.J. – Hefty cast-iron trucks, banks and figural doorstops found favor with bidders who congregated at Bertoia’s New Jersey gallery for a lighthearted summer auction of ‘Toys with Character.’ The June 10-11 sale grossed $1,014,000, with above-estimate and even world record prices achieved on many of the 1,481 lots offered. All prices quoted in this report include a 15% [...]
THE SUMMER HEAT MAY VERY WELL carry into November with equally heated bidding at the Rich Penn Auction Event. Held at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, IA on November 4, 5 & 6, the three day auction event will include 1,500 lots, all without reserve. According to Penn, “This is one of the strongest and most diverse auctions [...]
TIMONIUM, MD – Clad in age-defying cast iron, antique mechanical banks made another bulletproof run across the auction block June 4th at RSL’s 499-lot sale featuring the John Jirkofsky collection. Partner Ray Haradin – the “R” in RSL, along with Steven and Leon Weiss – said the sale held at Opfer Auctions’ gallery attracted around 160 online bidders and another [...]
DONALD KAUFMAN (1930-2009) didn’t collect toys with a finish line as the objective. He relished every moment of the nearly six-decade journey he embarked upon in 1950 with the $4 purchase of an Arcade Red Baby truck. The same passion for automotive forms that had been ignited in him as a young man selling automobiles “off the curbstone” seemed to [...]
FAIRFIELD, MAINE, May 4-5, 2011. Who knows what treasures lurk in the hearts of homes? The auctioneer knows. When items and large collections have been stashed in homes for as long as one can remember, bidders sit up and take notice. That’s exactly what happened at Julia’s recent auction to bring the final tally beyond a pre-auction estimate of just [...]
BY BOB HERBERT WHEN THE FAMILY CAR first appeared on our streets on or about the turn of the 19th/20th Century, it was greeted with a combination of wonder, surprise, and suspicion. And it looked as though it had lost its horse. To calm down some of that suspicion, a good number of the first automobile models really did look [...]
VINELAND, N.J. – It’s doubtful that even a crystal ball could have been more accurate than Bertoia Auctions’ experts who predicted the Donald Kaufman auction series would finish at around $12 million. As the record now shows, with the hammering of the last lot in the fifth and final auction to disperse the fabled collection, held on April 15-16, 2011, [...]
BY JACK HERBERT SPRING IS HERE, finally, and so it is time to bring out the horses once again. Most of the toys we’ll be reviewing today date back to the turn of the 19th-20th Century, when the horse was IT in the field of transportation. Hop aboard, then, for a drawn ride down through the years. There’s not a [...]
VINELAND, NJ – It took weeks to catalog the enormous array of beautiful toys, banks and doorstops chosen for Bertoia Auctions’ June 10-11 Toys with Character sale, and gallery associate Rich Bertoia says it was worth every minute of the effort. “When collectors get this catalog, they’re going to want to take their time,” he said. “There’s literally a surprise [...]
FAIRFIELD, MAINE, MAY 4-5, 2011. There’s something comforting about the familiar. But in the auction world, the opposite holds true. Collectors prefer a fresh to the market selection of goods over merchandise that has been seen, bought and sold by everyone under the sun. Renowned for assembling vibrant, quality sales in a variety of categories, James D. Julia Auctioneers is [...]
