At the 400-lot February 15 sale, childhood toys and deadly weapons made odd bedfellows. Best of a collection of boxed Dinky toys was the Weetabix 514 Guy van, right, which, despite some chips, sold at £460. The toys included two collections of mint and boxed locomotives where the best seller was a Wrenn model, Duchess of Abercorn. One of some 50 to have been painted in the wrong grey livery, it went at a ten-times estimate £880.
The weaponry included a collection of tribal weapons which attracted interest from New Zealand and New York. Among them was an Aboriginal carved wood shield which took a ten-times estimate £880.
Among the firearms were a cased Tranter-type pistol and a flintlock blunderbuss. The pistol, by Gulliver & Goldthorpe, Barnsley, made £1350 against printed hopes of £100-150 and the blunderbuss, with overflip bayonet, signed to the lock plate J.Bobbit, quadrupled the estimate at £1100.
