“At the upcoming fair on Saturday, November 10, we will have 530 tables occupied by about 350 dealers,” he adds.
“Over the last few years we have seen an increase in the number of dealers coming over from the continent. Whether this is linked to our leaving the EU I don’t know, but we certainly have more people from France, Holland and Germany in particular, taking sales tables right now.”
The older toys such as tin cars, tinplate toys generally, Dinky toys and Hornby and Bassett-Lowke trains are “very much in demand” says Potter, and it is usually these types of toys and trains that the European dealers bring over.
Traditional houses
Wendy Hobday deals in the more traditional end of the toys market – antique and vintage dolls’ houses – and has regularly exhibited with BP Fairs at Sandown Park since its launch.
She also organises the biannual dolls and dolls’ house fair in London at Kensington Town Hall.
Hobday says that at Sandown Park buyers particularly like the 1930s houses made by the Lines Brothers or Triang, which sell for between £250-300, or the smaller versions by Triang at around £120.
She finds that original miniature house furnishings also sell well to people wanting to “do up” an Edwardian or Art Deco doll’s house. Hobday herself collects dolls’ houses, and her absolute pride is a Lines 1900 house which she bought at auction complete with all its furnishings.
