Shrewsbury lorry driver's collection of Dinky toys sells for £11,000
A retired Shropshire lorry driver's toy collection, including some rare Dinky Supertoys, sold for £11,000 at auction.
The collection accounted for more than half of the 230 auction lots at Halls' toys auction at Battlefield, Shrewsbury.
Top price went to a rare boxed Dinky Supertoys Guy Van model in the livery of Lyons Swiss Rolls, which made £560.
Other Dinky Toys, a Regent Petrol tanker and two based on Mobilgas, all sold for more than £300 each. Other leading prices were £270 for a boxed Dinky Toys Foden flat truck, £200 each for a group of nine boxed Corgi 'Aviation Archive' aeroplanes, and £190 for a group of eight Scalextric slot car models dating from the early 1960s.
A rare example of the first Airfix kit model, a Ferguson TE20 tractor, failed to reach its reserve and will be offered at Halls' next toys auction in October.
Stewart Orr, Halls' toy specialist, said: "Most of the lots in the auction came from a collector who began collecting model trucks in the 1960s and continued until recently.
"The auction again demonstrated the strong demand from collectors for Dinky Toys that are boxed and in mint condition. Because the price for these perfect models is so high, a lot of buyers are now going for boxes of playworn Dinky toys that they can restore. It's a great example of recycling.
"There is a real art to restoring these models and some of the paintwork on the finished models is better than the original."
