Condition, form and rarity make this an exceptional toy. Recently donated to the Manor Trust, a charity based in Lewes which was the vendor at Bonhams, this is a rare and relatively sophisticated model in the form of a sports coupe.
Lithographed in red and black livery with a male driver and lady passenger, batteries would have been supplied to power the electric headlights on the car.
When bought in the 1920s, this was an expensive toy (it probably cost the equivalent of around £100) something alluded to in an inscription to the original box reading: To Ted wishing him many Happy returns of the day from Lady Eleanor.
For whatever reason, Ted did not play with this toy and nor did he eat the contents. Take off the roof and inside, still wrapped in greaseproof paper, were Crawford’s biscuits of different shape: some numbers; some letters; and others as exotic animals with their names stamped on them.
“In over ten years of working in the auction business, I have never seen a biscuit tin of this age offered for sale with its original biscuits,” said Leigh Gotch, head of Bonhams’ toy department. “It is remarkable that they were not eaten by their owner, although I wouldn’t suggest that the new owner tries them in the future.”
But for the four serious biscuit tin collectors (all of them from the UK) this was simply the icing on the cake. When the preceding lot, a similar Crawford Rolls Royce tin with scratches and surface rust, sold for £4000, it made this near-mint tin look certain to eclipse its £2000-3000 estimate. The buyer at £13,000 – a record price for a biscuit tin – was a private collector from the North of England.
By Roland Arkell
Antique tin sells at £13,000 with its original biscuits
It was a headline writer’s dream: an 80-year-old William Crawford & Sons biscuit tin still with its original contents intact sold at auction for a massive £13,000 (plus 20 per cent buyer’s premium). Crumbs! Cookie tin brings a lot of dough (Reuters) was just one of a number of groaning puns.
