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Hello
First time poster. My husband has loads of toys from the seventies: Britains, Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox and some Thunderbirds and Starwars. He alaways put them back in the boxes after playing with them (some never played with). They have been stored carefully at his Dads for decades. Unfortunately his Dad has dementia and at some point has taken some out of their boxes. We have 4 large boxes of boxed and unpaired boxes and toys. I know we could sell them on EBay but we have a whole house to do and it’s a bit soul destroying to be honest. We are in Nottinghamshire. What do you suggest about selling these on?

Local Auction house?

Hello Charlie
Sorry to hear your father in law has reached this phase of life. It’s not easy for your family.

Regarding how to proceed with the toys depend on your objectives.
If you want to maximize your financial return, then you’d probably want to photograph each one from multiple sides and auction them individually.
If you need to divest of these items quickly, then there may be dealers who would buy the whole lot. Some of those dealers read this website and may contact you via ‘private message’.
A third option would be to auction groups or lots of 6-8 models, photographed from multiple angles including the bottoms.

As Bob suggested, there may be a local auction house in your area. Or there is ebay. Or there is the ‘Market place’ tab on this website. Since this website focuses on British diecast, you’d likely get the most interest in items made in England, the U.K. or Great Britain.
My personal recommendation would be to try selling a few items on this website’s ‘Market Place’ tab and see how it goes.

Good luck to you and your family as you transition to a new phase of life.

Kurt

You could contact the Vintage Toyshop in Leicester (http://www.leicestervintage.co.uk/). The owner is a very helpful man called Joe, and I'm sure he would drive out to you to view.

Thank you for replying everyone. We (a little reluctantly) have a general dealer guy coming round to take the lot in a couple of weeks. We haven’t the time nor the emotional energy to sort them individually I don’t think. It’s a shame because we would like to see them go to someone who would enjoy them but real life gets in the way! Dementia is cruel.

Please allow me to make a few humble suggestions.
NOTE to the "elders" in the group: Please correct or suggest any modifications to my suggestions for the wellbeing of this family. Their overall wellbeing is my only focus.

1. I HIGHLY recommend you get 3 separately sourced offers if selling the lot, if you are interested in maxing out your return.

2. You could consider a consignment shop to sell them for you on eBay, which they could do individually or any way you choose, but I would expect their fee would be 50%, so another option to consider.

3. From personal and professional experience, if you sold them individually yourself or as a family(anyone open to being a part of it), this can actually become an opportunity to feel your emotions vs not address them. These objects were a focused passion and enjoyment for your loved one, so handling them, in my experience, would be similar to handling his deepest self(soul if your open to that idea). This is a VERY personal decision and my intention is to simply bring this option to light from a psychological aspect for healing, which is my background. This would also create the most funds, which is dependent on your situation. NOTE: You would be making a conscious choice to be vulnerable to your emotions, which will be incredibly difficult, but when done with a healthy support system and constructive, healthy, honest communication can be an incredible and helpful, yet very difficult experience. Please consult those assisting you medically for their perspective on exercising this option.

4. It would also be prudent to consider what your loved ones wishes would be in selling them, assuming he was of healthy mental wellness. NOTE: this can carry emotions with it as well as it requires a level of empathetic thought, which could trigger other emotions, but also used to heal if addressed with loving support and constructive thoughts.

5. As an individual's mind lessens, sometimes trigger objects can be used to create a connection to a past memory or emotion, such as receiving a Christmas gift that you have been waiting all school year to get. As a result, in my experience, if he had a few favorites, it may be beneficial to keep them as trigger objects and maybe an additional few in boxes as well and at the end of the day you could place them back in the boxes. The intention would be to act as mental aids in creating creative thoughts and processing to slow his mental slide.


Personal Thoughts: When confronting any difficult emotion within oneself, it is most prudent to create healthy habits and defaults in your reactions, such as when those painful emotions erupt within, proactively set a flag(make it a mental trigger) to remind you to respond by previously chosen methods. This would include anything overall constructive to you and your families well being such as; planning a healthy family dinner, a solo or group walk or any healthy exercising, board games or puzzles with family and friends. My personal go to is increasing my self knowledge on the condition at hand and increasing my conscious awareness on what I can constructively do to help my loved one. New science is being created/discovered everyday, or alternative medicines and food related items such as the possibility(based on studies) that higher consumption of dairy products could have a more adverse affect to their mentally declining condition.

I highly encourage you and your family to take advantage of the many constructive resources that exist if you have not already. Here are a few links to help you on your familiar challenging journey.
- https://www.dementiacarecentral.com/
- https://www.venturatownehouse.com/blog/ ... s-dementia
- https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/d/dementia

Maintaining the highest quality of life as individuals and a family is what matters most from my experiences.

My thoughts and prayers are forever with you and your family.


PS I humbly apologize to the moderators if I have overstepped my bounds. The old adage goes, "knowledge is power" and combined with the power of Love, anything is possible, in my experience, hence my exhaustive response.

DevilsAdvocate wrote:PS I humbly apologize to the moderators if I have overstepped my bounds.

It's all fine by me. (Both my parents and my wife's parents suffered from dementia.)

Thank you Devil's Advocate for that thoughtful reply. We have given the toys to a dealer who will also be helping us with the house clearance. The dealer does know a bit about toys but will take them to a toy fair. My father in law is a hoarder so it is a really difficult job so we gave him the 'carrot' of the toys. Emotionally, it was more difficult for my husband and he just wanted to get rid of them. The money value was not really important in the scheme of things when care costs over a thousand pounds a week. The most important thing to us (for him) is photos. We have thousands of them! We will be making sure he has lots of photobooks. Dementia is absolutely heartbreaking and it focuses your mind on what's important in life. To us it is now trying to find him a peaceful place to live in the countryside with lots of animals near him as he was a farmer.

By the way for other posters information - we contacted the Leicester toy shop bloke and he got back to us but it went into my junkmail so it was too late. I wish he could have taken some of the bits as I wanted them to be 'loved' by someone who wanted them. Hey ho - he seemed a decent person though and I would definitely have dealt with him.

Thanks again