No small feat as huge car collection set to sell
50 year-old collection of 6,500 pieces could sell for £150,000
FIFTY years in the making, The Old Garage Model Automobile Collection of 1:43 scale model cars is beyond compare – with more than 600 makes among 6,500 exhibits charting the history of manufacturing and motor racing around the world.
Billed as the largest ever private collection of model cars and to be auctioned off next month, the collection even includes 15 Jensen models including several Interceptor varieties.
The company that made the real thing was founded by West Bromwich brothers Alan and Richard Jensen exactly 100 years ago in 1922.
The models have been made by companies including NEO, Oxford Diecast, IXO, True Scale Miniatures, Atlas, Matrix, Corgi, Vanguard and Vitesse.
The entire collection – conservatively valued at £150,000, say the auctioneers – is known as TOGMAC for short.
It is showcased online in a virtual museum that’s an Aladdin’s Cave for Midlands’ motoring enthusiasts.
Whether you are more smitten by a Mini (24 versions), a Morgan (21) or the MG (39 including the laughably unsexy 1982 MG Metro), if you can think of the make of a car it’s almost certainly featured. There’s everything from an Abarth (Italy) to a Zwickau (East Germany) – one of 11 makes beginning with a Z alone.
Although there are none beginning with an ‘X’ and ‘Y’ is solely for Yamaha, you’ll find Wallace & Gromit next to a 1956 Austin A35 Van (by Corgi).
Painstakingly captured for posterity in miniature, each offering is a golden reminder of millions of childhoods spent crawling over living room carpets.
Popular film and TV series represented range from James Bond and Only Fools and Horses to Thunderbirds, Mad Max, Back to the Future, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Batman.
The anonymous owner is now putting all of the models up for sale, saying simply: “I’d rather hand them on for other collectors to enjoy.”
And, although he wishes to remain anonymous, he’s clearly a fan of Midlands’ manufacturing – in real life he’s owned the original Mini, the Rover SD1, and, after a mid-1970s’ Aston Martin V8, seven Jaguar XJS cars.
The models are being sold in a number sales by Excalibur Auctions from Saturday, November 5.