Special Auction Services sale see a mixture of vintage and modern collectables

The Special Auction Services 704 lot general toy and train sale held in February was a regular mixture of vintage modern collectable toys, with several specialised areas.

Overall, reports the auction house’s Hugo Marsh, some £68,000 was realised on the day for the toys that went under the hammer. More than 98% of lots sold, which represented a total well above pre-sale expectations.

Amongst the collectables sold were several highlights. Best of the bunch was arguably the four lots of boxed, unmade, Pocher 1/8 scale vintage motor car kits. As many readers will know, these kits were the last word in car modelling back in the 1970s when they began to trickle into the model shops (remember them?). They were eye-wateringly expensive to anyone who bought Airfix and Revell and were pretty much the exclusive purchases of the well-heeled.  A Rolls-Royce Phantom II Sedanca Coupe made £520, with the pretty Mercedes-Benz 500K-AK Cabriolet and Rolls-Royce Phantom II Torpedo Cabriolet both making the same sum. The exception was the gorgeous Bugatti Type 50T, which was contested all the way to £620. Look online and you’ll see that these kits still command huge sums when assembled – so the above prices were not excessive.

Aside from vehicles there was a good number of lots from two large collections of Bassett-Lowke and these, along with other waterline ship models, made £11,850. In the train section proper, an 89 lot section of constructed and unconstructed kit locomotives realised a healthy £8,440, showing that interest in miniature railways remains unabated.

The next sale, on April 16, will be another large Glorious Trains sale, and Hugo says that more than 1,000 lots were already consigned at the time of writing.