Models, Toys, Dolls & Games

Special Auction Services is selling what it bills as ‘the largest and most valuable doll collection to been seen at auction for 25 years’.

The Late John Ruddle Collection of toy soldiers sale held at C&T (22% buyer’s premium) on December 6 was a very special occasion.

A sterling silver scale model of the Lockheed TriStar aircraft was the top lot at Kinghams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Silver and Objects of Vertu sale in the Cotswolds.

Auction offered near-complete example of the set that also formed a first pocket atlas of England and Wales

Dealer Daniel Hadden is hoping for an early Christmas present with the sale of two tree decorations that once belonged to Queen Victoria.

The Matchbox Superfast 74a Daimler Fleetline Bus estimated at £60-80 as Lot 214 in the Vectis (27% buyer’s premium inc VAT) sale on October 31 made £35, while the version guided at £50-70 two lots later made £120.

Created in the late 1920s by Spanish aeronautical engineer Juan de la Cierva (1895-1936), the autogiro entered service in the late 1930s.

How much would you spend on an antique or vintage chess set? Here are three examples from different periods that sold across a wide range of prices.

The Barbie movie might not have been such a hit if it was called Bild-Lilli instead.

The highly imaginative post-war toys made in Japan for the US market are sought-after lots at auction

The first American Civil War playset produced by Marx came in 1958 but in 1961 a real blockbuster version appeared: the Giant Blue and Gray Battle Set.

An intriguing painted wooden British soldier doll sold for more than 10 times the top estimate when it was offered at Guernsey auction house Martel Maides (24% buyer’s premium).

The growth in toys and collectables is related to the age of buyers and the items they remember from their own childhood, auction houses say.

With the blockbuster Margot Robbie-Ryan Gosling movie packing cinemas worldwide, this has been the summer of Barbie, and that also includes the toy-collecting world.

This set of 36 cards is an early edition of what became known as 'Petit Etteilla' cartomancy (fortune-telling) cards.

These boxed hollow-cast figures of Peter Pan and Captain Hook in a sword fight were made by Sacul in the early 1950s to coincide with the Walt Disney movie release.

Anyone who has been charmed by teddies all their adult life since maybe an early adoration of Winnie-the-Pooh could head to the long-running biannual Hugglets Teddies Festival.

From late 1940 to early 1941 André Breton and a group of other Surrealists including Wifredo Lam, Max Ernst, Oscar Dominguez, Victor Brauner, André Masson and Frédéric Delanglade re-located to Marseille where they anxiously awaited visas to escape occupied France.

The Vinyl Cape Jawa was the first Star Wars action figure to assume mythic status among collectors.