![Original Yonezawa (Japan) 10in tin windup Diamond Planet Robot, rare variation with blue body and red arms, 100% original, with high-quality repro box. Sold within estimate for $33,210. Image courtesy of Milestone Auctions](https://www.liveauctioneers.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/74a_1.jpg)
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – Nearly 880 lots of high-quality antique and vintage toys crossed the auction block at Milestone’s December 10 Winter Toy Extravaganza, chalking up $750,000 and making many collectors’ Christmas dreams come true.
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – Nearly 880 lots of high-quality antique and vintage toys crossed the auction block at Milestone’s December 10 Winter Toy Extravaganza, chalking up $750,000 and making many collectors’ Christmas dreams come true.
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – Every antique toy collector dreams of finding something rare and exotic under the Christmas tree, and sometimes those dreams come true. But there is an alternative that offers much better odds. Those who don’t want to risk receiving a clip-on tie or box of stale chocolates can find and bid on hundreds of rare and beautiful toys in Milestone Auctions’ December 10 Winter Toy Extravaganza. The suburban Cleveland company may be known for selling every type of high-end collectible from antique firearms to vintage petroliana, but toys are special to the Milestone crew. It’s one of the categories upon which their brand was founded, and its following amongst collectors is rock solid.
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – If anyone wondered whether new collectors were still entering the antique toy hobby or not, they got their answer last spring when Milestone Auctions closed the books on their headline-making Antique Toy Spectacular. Toy fans worldwide are still buzzing about the Popeye and Olive Oyl Tank that brought a record $105,000 at that sale. On September 24, Milestone will roll out a fresh offering of outstanding vintage toys from the Mark Smith Collection, with high-quality additions from other consignors.
VINELAND, N.J. – On September 8-9, with absentee and Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers, Bertoia’s will auction the antique toy collection of the late Bill and Stevie Weart, a couple whose contributions to the toy hobby were immense. Anyone who ever had the privilege of visiting the Wearts at their magnificent home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was left with the impression that they had witnessed something exceptional for these times. Their grand three-story residence, which was situated in a tranquil parklike setting, visually reflected what was most important to them in a home: fine architecture, tasteful furnishings, a garden that beckoned wild birds, and most of all, an interior design plan that prioritized the display of their spectacular toy collection.
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – Antique toy enthusiasts love nothing more than to discover the earliest iterations of whatever specialty they collect, and on October 2nd at Milestone Auctions in suburban Cleveland it was both Marx and motorcycle fans who hit the jackpot. The 704-lot auction, which was almost exclusively devoted to a single-owner collection, featured 138 super-clean bikes, including two American Marx prototypes that tied for top-lot honors at $22,800 apiece. Each had been estimated at $6,000-$8,000.
Intense competition pushed Marx prototype motorcycles to top of prices realized
A throng of determined bidders competed from both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, pushing the sale total to $768,000. It was the highest-grossing toy auction in Milestone’s history.
“There was huge interest in many categories, but most especially the motorcycles, which represented scores of manufacturers from Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy, Russia and the USA. Absentee and opening bids were insane, right off the bat,” said Milestone Auctions co-owner Chris Sammet. “The Marx prototype bikes were Speedboy 4 military-themed windups, finished in the distinctive colors of early Marx toys and with hand-painted details. One had a rear-mounted cannon and the other had a camouflage-patterned box on the back. We started getting calls about them a good month before the sale. There was no doubt they were going to fly.”
The high quality of post-WWII Japanese motorcycles was evident in the sharp-looking 12-inch-long friction-powered motorcycle known as “Romance.” Lithographed in a rainbow of pleasing colors with an image of the planet Saturn on the gas tank, the bike is operated by a helmeted and goggled male driver, with a female passenger also along for the ride. In working order and all original, it sold for $5,640 against an estimate of $2,000-$3,000.
Perhaps the “sleeper” of the section was a much smaller Japanese tin friction production identified on its box label as “Hunter-Motor Cycle.” Although only 4½ inches long, the bike is amazingly well detailed and was complete, down to its attached rifle and the fowl enclosed in a net at the back. In like-new condition with its excellent factory box, the diminutive bike zipped off to a new owner for $3,840, more than six times the high estimate.
Following closely behind the Marx prototype motorcycles at the top of prices realized was a good-looking Marx (USA) Blondie and Dagwood Family Car that never made it into production. Finished in a rich blue with red, yellow and gold accents, the windup open car included figures of Dagwood at the wheel with Blondie and their son Alexander sharing the passenger seat. This coveted prototype commanded $16,200 against an estimate of $4,000-$6,000.
Transportation toys held their own throughout the sale, no matter what type of transportation they happened to depict. A terrific example of a Japanese tin friction Atom-Car #153, 15½ inches long, retained its original driver figure and rare box. It easily swept pasts its estimate range to settle at $5,400.
On the other hand, there was a Strauss (USA) tin windup “Santee Claus,” with the holiday gift-giver looking jaunty in his decorative sleigh pulled by a pair of belled, leaping reindeer. Measuring 11 inches long and offered with its excellent Christmas-themed box, it dashed away for $6,000 – four times the high estimate.
A visual extravaganza, a Distler (Germany) tin windup set known as “Pinched!” re-enacts a police chase in the countryside. When activated, a motorcycle cop pursues a speeding automobile around a platform amid scenery that includes mountains, farmland, railroad trestles and more. The setting is also illustrated on the box that accompanied the toy, which sold above estimate for $6,900.
An extensive 86-lot array of Lehmann (Germany) windup and flywheel toys crossed the auction block, many of them retaining their original boxes. A fine example of the tin windup “Boxer Rebellion” toy – inspired by the Boxer secret society that was active during the Chinese rebellion of 1899-1901 – was offered with an estimate of $10,000-$15,000.
All original, complete and in excellent working order, it rose to $17,400. Also selling above estimate was a handsome Lehmann tin windup Halloh motorcycle that appeared seldom, if ever, to have been taken out of its original pictorial box. It crossed the finish line at $6,900.
Of unknown German manufacture, a 17-inch-long hand-painted composition cat skittles set consisted of a large striped-cat vessel in which seven smaller cat skittles were housed. Rolling along on cast-iron wheels, the fabulous feline pounced on a winning bid of $16,200 against an estimate of $1,000-$1,500.
The 713-lot auction attracted so many absentee, phone and Internet bids that it ran nearly 12 hours from start to finish. The great success it achieved was not without its challenges, however. The day before the auction, the hosting company Milestone uses for its own online bidding platform was hit by a ransomware attack that affected many industries, from aerospace to transportation, agriculture to publishing.
“The timing was bad, but in our business, you learn to have a contingency plan in place, which we always do,” said Milestone co-owner and auctioneer Miles King. “Fortunately, we always use two other bidding platforms — including LiveAuctioneers — in addition to our own, so Internet bidders were not left out. The biggest challenge was in notifying bidders about the situation, on short notice. Just about everyone who wanted to bid was able to do so, and we were grateful for that. The bottom line is, collectors were not going to sit back and miss out on a collection as great as the one we were selling just because of a technology problem. They wanted those toys.”
To discuss consigning to a collection or individual items to a future Milestone toy auction, call 440-527-8060 or email info@milestoneauctions.com. Online: www.milestoneauctions.com
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WILLOUGHBY, Ohio – They came from the future and landed on Earth in the 1950s and ’60s, but now toy robots of that classic production era seem more like prophets whose mission is being fulfilled more than half a century later in the labs of MIT and NASA. For many collectors, the connection to robots is rooted in a childhood memory – discovering that Santa had left them a walking, flashing, noisy android under the Christmas tree. Collectors will relive that indelible memory on May 1st at Milestone’s 766-lot Spring Spectacular Toy Auction, which features a specialty grouping of more than 100 coveted vintage robots and space toys.