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Photo courtesy: Brenda Kelley Kim
Husband-and-wife auction team Walt and Robin Kolenda of Cape Ann Auction are used to climbing around attics, garages, and homes for vintage and antique items. Rummaging through boxes is part of the “thrill of the hunt” when picking an estate sale. Recently, while cleaning out a house in Cape Ann—an area of fishing villages and beach towns north of Boston, Massachusetts—something happened that most pickers and dealers dream of but rarely come across.
As they were finishing their work, Robin spotted a small door in a corner of the home and sensed there might be something there. Walt was initially hesitant, as it appeared to be just some old pipes and wires behind the door, but as he looked further, he spotted a box. He could see the top of what looked like a tin toy truck poking out of the flaps, and that’s when he thought, “Well, this is going to be a good box.”
Behind that box were more finds, including a treasure trove of antique and vintage tin toys, books, games, and ephemera. Based on the dates from the newspapers wrapped around some of the items, Walt estimates that all of the toys are from the 1930s, with many possibly dating from the turn of the 20th century.
“OUR BIGGEST SURPRISE”
As they were launching their auction of these incredible finds of toys, petroliana, and more, WorthPoint visited the Cape Ann auction hall to talk to Walt and see some of the items. “This might not turn out to be our biggest find,” Walt said, “But it sure is our biggest surprise!”
Once Walt and Robin emptied the crawl space of box after box, with the entire haul spread before them, they realized what they had was truly a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. Altogether, the auction featured 208 lots, and as soon as it went live online, the bids came rushing in for the tin treasures and antique toys.
Photo courtesy: Brenda Kelley Kim
“A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING”
Most of the items found in the home were tin items. Some advertising signs, coin banks, and tin figures sat alongside vintage Disney books and antique Parker Brothers board games. Walt explained that in his career, he’s come across furniture, art, coins, jewelry, and collectibles, but he doesn’t think of himself as an expert in any particular area.
“I can do appraisals, and I know the industry, but no one knows it all. Antiques represent the history of everything that ever was. No one can be an expert in all of it, but I’ve been at it since the 1970s. I love learning, and every day, I have the chance to find something amazing or learn something new.”
Photo courtesy: Brenda Kelley Kim
The auction featured several major brands of toys from the early 20th century, including Louis Marx, Hubley, Kenton, Tootsie Toys, and American Flyer trains. With the variety and the sheer number of items found, Walt knew the auction would appeal to a broad range of collectors and vintage enthusiasts.
PUTTING THE WORD OUT
Naturally, after getting everything out of the crawl space, cataloged, and accounted for, Walt began planning how to market and sell the toys. He told WorthPoint that he’s a big believer in making finds like these accessible to the community of buyers, pickers, and collectors, locally and across the country.
I don’t feel I have to squeeze every last dime out of every item. I used an absolute auction system for these items. For every lot, the bidding starts at $1.00, and if it doesn’t go a penny higher, that is what the item sells for. I think many of these pieces will fetch decent prices, but there are sure to be some bargains, too. With an absolute auction, every buyer has a chance to purchase something. Antiques should be for everyone, and in this auction, anyone interested in collecting old toys, books, or games will find something special.
Kolenda used the online auction platform AuctionNinja for this pick, but he’s familiar with most of the major auction sites. He documented the unboxing of many items on his TikTok profile, building social media buzz among collectors. Walt and his wife recorded the unboxing video as they saw most of the toys for the first time, noting the dates on the newspapers cushioning the pieces. At one point, he says, “This is why we pick.”
THE TOY TIME CAPSULE GOES LIVE
When WorthPoint spoke with Walt at his shop in Gloucester, Massachusetts, we noticed many of the auction items displayed on shelves. The first truck he spotted while cleaning the space had a dusty metal roof visible between the box flaps. It sat among smaller treasures in an antique glass-front cabinet, cleaned up and ready to be sold to a new collector. That pressed steel truck attracted a frenzy of bidding, eventually selling for $2,052.
The auction’s highest-selling lot was also a truck, a MetalCraft Shell Oil tin truck, which one lucky collector nabbed for $2,152 before the buyer’s premium.
The auction was open for seven days, so bidders could peruse the photos online and enter bids on these incredible toys and ephemera. Activity on the listings was brisk, and many items showed last-minute bids as pickers, sellers, and toy fans scrambled for their favorite pieces.
REFLECTIONS ON A FIND
With its rich history of fishing and sea voyages, Cape Ann is home to dozens of antique shops, all of which have seen hundreds of items come out of the historic former homes of whaling captains and sailors. Much like the mythical Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick, collectors in this area are hunting for their personal “white whale,” and for Walt, the metaphor is an apt one. “Hard work, curiosity, and treating people fairly pay off in this business.”
And this time, for us, the payoff was a great one!
As a life-long learner, Walt told WorthPoint that the lesson in this particular find came from his wife urging him to look a little further. He said,
If I learned anything, it’s not to underestimate my wife’s picking instincts! After a long, hard day of packing and loading the rest of the house, she pushed me to dig into an attic whose door was covered with debris and blocked pretty tight. My only interests at that point were to appease her with a fast look and get my exhausted butt home! We were there for three more hours digging out one of the best finds we’d ever seen. Neither one of us was tired!
Eric Bradley, Vice President of Content and Public Relations for WorthPoint, stated, “This discovery is a collector’s dream: To find an unknown stash of toys untouched for decades is such a rare opportunity. Whoever put this collection together was a smart collector. Each of these items is either in near-perfect condition or one of a kind. This is one of the best toy discoveries I’ve seen in a long time.”
Photo courtesy: Brenda Kelley Kim
Cape Ann Auction is located at 159 Maplewood Avenue in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The company is open by appointment and offers certified appraisals, online auction consultation, and professional downsizing assistance.
Brenda Kelley Kim lives in the Boston area. She is the author of Sink or Swim: Tales From the Deep End of Everywhere and writes a weekly syndicated column for The Marblehead Weekly News/Essex Media Group. When not writing or walking her snorty pug, Penny, she enjoys yard sales, flea markets, and badminton.
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