27/10/2024 General News
A collection of vintage toy robots, thought to be the largest in the UK, is set to sell for over thirty thousand pounds at auction later this month. The collection, amassed by a gentleman from Bristol, goes up for auction on October 30th at Auctioneum Ltd.
‘It’s an unbelievable collection,’ says Toy Specialist Lucy McCourt ‘as we opened each box, we just kept finding more and more robots. Before long, they had filled our saleroom! It’s probably the biggest collection in the country, and certainly the biggest collection I’ve ever seen.’
The collection features over four-hundred robots, which has been divided into over two hundred and fifty lots. ‘Most of the collection comes from the ‘golden age’ of space toys – the 1960s,’ adds Lucy ‘they represent a time where we were fascinated by space travel, where humankind was just a few years away from landing on the Moon. These robots reflect the zeitgeist of the 1960s, but also showcase technology from the time – toys featuring batteries were still a relative novelty!’
The collection was amassed by a gentleman from Bristol, who was given his first toy robot in early childhood and continued collecting until last year. Now, he wants others to enjoy the robots and give them loving new homes.
‘It’s one of those collections,’ adds Lucy ‘that will go down in history as something very special. Collections like this are a once-in-a-lifetime offering. I doubt we will ever see a collection quite like this ever again!’
Highlights from the collection include a rare Japanese Horikawa ‘Machine Robot’ which features an array of gears to its chest – still in full working order and complete within its original box. It’s expected to fetch over three hundred pounds along. Other robots from the same company also feature within the collection and many of them are still in working order, some sixty years after they were made.
The robots go under the hammer on October 30th at Auctioneum’s specialist Toy Collector’s Auction. The catalogue and full collection can be viewed on their website www.auctioneum.co.uk