The toys no child can touch

Collecting toys is a serious business, with coveted items fetching thousands of euro at auction – making it a pastime that's definitely not for children, writes EDEL MORGAN

‘THESE TOYS are not for playing with,” says a man at the Toys of Yesterday fair in Bray, Co Wicklow, as he moves at a speed that belied his years to rescue a 1930s tinplate fire engine from the clutches of my four-year-old. We later discover the fire engine, made by German company Tipp Co, is worth €3,000 to €5,000.

After the tense moment has passed, he keeps a protective arm over the toys on display, which include an early “rat-faced” Mickey Mouse and a 1960s battery-operated tinplate robot worth upwards of €600. Following another near mishap involving a Matchbox car in mint condition at another table, my husband finally takes our two boys to the car.

The organiser Des Cooney says the irony of a toy fair being no place for young children isn’t lost on him. Most of the attendees are 50- to 80-year-olds who are in their element in this wonderland of tinplate toys, soldiers and die-cast cars, trains, trucks and buses.

“We get quite a few wandering in with their sticks and their Zimmer frames,” says Cooney, who knows men who have been collecting for so long that miniature toys cover every surface in their homes, spill out of drawers and cabinets, and even line the tops of door frames. “It’s almost an addiction,” says Cooney, who has been collecting for 50 years.

The atmosphere in the Bray Wheelers clubhouse is a world away from the hustle and bustle of the more commercial hotel fairs. It’s a social event where collectors trickle in to browse, chat about the old times over tea and biscuits and get free valuation advice.

The few women who attend tend to make a beeline for stand that has furniture for dolls’ houses. Cooney is not sure what drives people like him to stockpile the toys of their youth. “Maybe it’s something to do with a lack of acceptance of what’s going on in the world and harking back to past things that are less unsavoury. A real passion for collecting can sustain people through the difficult times of life and it’s something to wake up for and look forward to,” he says.

One of the stalwarts of the fair, William O’Flaherty, says such is his obsession with die-cast cars that he got married in 1947 at 21 with two Dinkys in his pocket.

Known as “the Dinky man” during his time as a bus driver because he kept toy cars under his seat, O’Flaherty says he spends every spare cent on his hobby. “Well I don’t drink or smoke,” he says.

Not all collectors are so up front about their hobby, according to Cooney. “Ebay has been a godsend to the closet collector,” he says. “Many don’t go to fairs because they feel ashamed. They feel it’s not quite an adult thing to be doing.”

The recession has separated the serious collectors from the dabblers. Few life-long enthusiasts are in it for the money, particularly in the small Irish market where die-cast toys such as Dinky and Matchbox have plummeted in value. According to Ron Willis, a trader at the fair, when investors came on the scene in the mid-1980s and interest in toys as valuable commodities took off, some of his first series Matchbox Models of Yesteryear fetched about €125 each. Today they can be bought for €35.

Cooney says: “It was a period when everything was hyped up by dealers and reports in the model press about record prices. Toys are very much a fad because there is no intrinsic value in them, no precious metals. It comes down to whether someone wants something enough and what someone is prepared to pay.”

Die-cast toys were first produced early in the 20th century by manufacturers such as Meccano, which introduced Dinky Toys in England, and Dowst manufacturing, which made Tootsie Toys in the US. The first models on the market were basic, consisting of a small car or van body with no interior. There were few Irish-based manufacturers producing mass-producing toys at the time, apart from the American company Comet and British company Timpo, which had set up in the Gaeltacht in the 1950s to avail of tax incentives.

The Irish Antique Dealers Association says none of its members specialises in toys. Fine art auctioneer, Adam’s, says it usually refers owners of any potentially valuable toys to Bonhams or Christie’s in London, which have teams of toy experts.

Kegan Harrison of Bonhams specialises in toys and says most collectors do it out of a sense of nostalgia. “They either want to buy toys they had as a kid or ones their families couldn’t afford to buy them. Pre-first World War tinplate toys are no longer in great demand because the people who played with them are mostly all gone. It usually takes a number of decades before they pass into the realm of antiques proper and interest picks up.”

The internet gives collectors and traders access to a wider range of markets and the price achieved often depends on to which market you are selling. “Jigsaws are big in the UK, but not so much here,” says Cooney, “while the Japanese like to buy toys that were exported from their country in the 1950s and 1960s. A typical example at the fair is a battery-operated monkey playing a saxophone made by Japanese firm Alps in the 1950s that would fetch €100-€150 in perfect working order.”

Not all the toys at the fair are vintage. Some collectors like to create miniature worlds with trains, people the size of thumbnails, tiny trees and flowers. Ted O’Neill, a regular at the fair, who worked in a number of circuses including Fossetts over 37 years, has a little circus at home with mini-elephants, trucks and a tent. “You can sit on a low chair looking across at it and you become part of that world,” he says.

Collector Fred Mayew says his love affair with military lorries and jeeps started 57 years ago when he was five years old. Mayew started attending the Easter parade and would go to Geary’s shop off Grafton Street “to look at the toys through the glass counter”.

His vast collection now includes French Dinky jeeps and armoured cars from the 1940s worth about €100-€150 each, but he would never sell them. “Who will I pass them on to? My sons have no interest. Maybe my grandchildren will, but it’s a dying thing,” he says.

Harrison of Bonhams is not so sure. While die-cast toys might be of limited appeal to younger generations, he says they will find other collectables. Plastic soldiers made in the 1970s by such firms as Britain and Timpo are a growing area and are being bought by men who are now in their 40s “whereas in the 1950s plastic was regarded as rubbish and unsaleable”. Early mint-condition Star Wars figures can fetch thousands at auction too.

The collectables of the future probably will not be Pokemon or McDonald’s toys or mass-produced film and TV-related toys, he says.

It will be “the stuff people aren’t expecting and that are evocative of their time” such as the first Transformers that came out in the 1980s, he says.

“A good proportion of them were played with and damaged,” he explains. “So not too many of them would be mint and boxed and in good condition. I’ve seen houses full of stuff that people are buying purely so it will appreciate in value. You should only collect because you like the stuff.”

The next Toys of Yesterday fair is on February 27th. For more information contact coo@indigo.ie

Treasure in the attic?

With most collectables condition is everything. The original packaging usually makes up at least 50 per cent of the value and the condition of the box is often as important as the condition of the model. Only with very rare and special items can condition be overlooked

1 Matchbox toys. The colour is often key to the value. For example a standard red or blue Bugatti Matchbox Model of Yesteryear for the early 1960s is worth about €25 in mint condition but a rare emerald green can fetch €4,000. Similarly with little petrol tankers made by Lesney/Matchbox in the 1950s, the standard red or yellow ones are valued at about €50 to €60 in the original box while the rare green version has been known to fetch more than €1,000 in similar condition.

2 Plastic soldiersby such firms as Britain or Timpo are popular modern collectables. Timpo's fourth-series cowboys in box sets of six figures can fetch several hundred euro if in pristine condition. Britain's Swoppets English civil war range, which have interchangeable heads and weapons, are the most sought-after in mint condition.

3 Spot-on die-cast modelsmade by Belfast company Tri-ang in the late 1950s to mid-1960s to compete with the Dinky and Corgi are not that widely available. So they can make €70-100 if mint and boxed. Trucks can make €200. The company also made furniture and accessories for dolls' houses. A miniature pram can fetch about €300.

4 Farm figuresare popular with rural collectors. Britain made Map of the World Friesian cows in association with Nestle in 1923, which are worth €80-100.

5 If your parents threw all of your toys out, now is the time to complain. Some of the original Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader Star Wars figuresreleased in 1977 have retractable blades on their light-sabre accessory. They sell for thousands if in mint condition.