GET YOUR KICKS - AND TINPLATE TRUCKS - ON ROUTE 66

A TRIP DOWN ROUTE 66, the famed 'Mother Road' highway that runs from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, reveals an unexpected home for a treasure trove of tinplate trucks.

CLASSIC SPACE COLLECTIBLES: CHOOSE FROM SCALE KITS TO TIN TOYS, ALL HIGHLY DESIRABLE AND APPRECIATING IN VALUE

The International Space Station is the size of a football field and circles the Earth more than 15 times a day. But before the ISS came a range of space station concepts, many of them featured in miniature form.

SPRING IS HERE AND SO IS THE TOURIST SEASON: SO HOWZABOUT A MODEL-SPOTTING TRIP TO LONDON’S COVENT GARDEN?

A recent visit to the famed Covent Garden Piazza in London revealed that there are miniatures to be found in the unlikeliest places.

MARKLIN TINPLATE WARSHIP HMS ‘TERRIBLE’ SELLS FOR RECORD MONEY

SMN report:

An ultra-rare steam-propelled tinplate cruiser became the most expensive single toy ever sold at a UK auction on Friday, April 20, when it shot past the estimate of £40-60,000 GBP to fetch a record £76,000 GBP ($122,500 USD). 

SUPERB COLLECTIBLES ON SALE THIS SATURDAY AT BREKER AUCTIONS

We’re keen on auctions at SMN, and find that local ones are a good, if unpredictable, source. You can pick up bargains of all sorts at these sorts of places, offering as they often do, house-clearance articles at knockdown prices.

You don’t know what’s there until viewing day of course, but there is often treasure to be unearthed - unbuilt plastic plastic kits, collectible model rail, toy soldiers - you name it, you might find it. Many articles are grouped together in these general auctions, and these can be simply mouthwatering - at the last auction we attended, a box containing ten Airfix kits, a feast of miscellaneous Hornby items and even half a dozen fair-condition Dinky Toys went for just £20.00 GBP ($29.00 USD) - a bargain or what?!

Specialist auctions are a different matter, and here values are carefully monitored, with items more likely to be sold as individual lots. One of the better known of specialist auction houses is the German Breker outfit, and above we show two of Breker’s lots for the upcoming auction on Saturday, May 29. The 555 mm (22 in) long traction engine (top picture) is a far cry from Corgi’s excellent, though rather smaller, 1:50 diecast models. You’ll need a small bag of coal to fuel this live-steam beast, made by Maxwell Hemmens of York, UK.

The racing car shown here is a classic tinplate item, and hugely desirable for lovers of the genre. The SMN Vault contains a bunch of tinplate robots - we’re firmly in the 1960s era with these, though can certainly appreciate the products of earlier times, such as this Gunthermann item from 1905. Even though it is more than a century old, the clockwork motor in the 310 mm (12.25 in) long car is still in working order.

It’ll be interesting to see what these, and other items fetch on Saturday. Breker claims big numbers with earlier sales - for example, the tinplate Tipp & Co speedster of 1936 (above) fetched a wallet-melting $17,200.00 USD (£12,000 GBP).  

Visit Breker to view lots and download pdfs here.

MODEL RAIL NOSTALGIA FEST

The SMN crew chanced on a collector fair a couple of days ago, at Kidlington, near Oxford, UK. There was a strong emphasis on model trains, mostly the 00 gauge preferred by UK enthusiasts (how we wish the UK was in line with the rest of the H0 world!) but there was plenty of variety there - diecasts old and new, and even a sprinkling of one of our personal faves, collectible robots and spacecraft from TV science fiction series.

But star of the show just had to be the splendid O gauge three-rail electric layout. Of course, items like this are hardly ‘true scale’ - they are (or were) a half-way point between a non-scale ‘toy’ and a true-scale ‘model’, and once you get over being upset that creations like these are not in the same accuracy league as a modern 1:43 diecast vehicle or a 1:48 aircraft kit, then you can enjoy them for what they are - immensely pleasurable objects, which also have the benefit of action, controllability, and the roar of metal wheels on metal rails.

Much the same goes for the trackside accessories - here for example, the buildings were mostly re-used decorative biscuit boxes, and very fine they looked too. The station is an original piece of tinplate railwayana though, and looks terrific, as does the tin platform, here sleek and shiny, unlike the real thing. The miniature scenes beloved of rail fans were present too - here a busy caravan rally, there a sheepdog trial.

All in all, the layout was a real blast from the past, and one that could encourage any nostalgia buff to invest in the past - with an eye on the future, in the form of steadily increasing values.

SURPRISE COLLECTIBLE GEMS

Always keep your eyes open for goodies - here’s a quickie trio of pictures, snapped in a tiny little corner store, whose main trade is in refurbing old ‘white goods’ - washing machines, fridges and the like.

The store owner turned out to be a keen collector, with a loft stuffed with desirable items. The ones in the shop were just a convenient overflow spot to thin out his collection.

You never know, there might just be that little item to make a collection sing - in my case, after some hard bargaining, I strolled out with the tinplate motorbike!