12 Buying Silver Toys as an Investment
hildren’s
toys of
silver and gold were not the privilege of wealthy English children until after
Charles II came to the throne in 1660.
Today
these toys are still available but compared with twentieth-century copies they
are very expensive. The asking price on eBay for a George III miniature silver
teapot today is £2300.
Like all
goods that are desirable, as the shortage of them becomes more acute, so the
price rises. Items of silver are still being manufactured today, and the
standard is very high. Now is the time to start collecting. There is little
known about Dutch and English silver toys. They are easy to recognise as being
antique. They are too small and delicate to falsify makers’ marks, yet
thousands of them were made and the dealers are becoming aware of what is
desirable and scarce. As the eighteenth-century toys and miniatures become more
and more scarce and expensive so the collectors will turn their attention to
the nineteenth- to twenty-first-century toys.
For the
collector there is another advantage: the toys are small, take up very little
space and don’t require any cleaning. They haven’t been tampered with (not
yet).
Today one
is able to buy a larger range of miniature silver items including motor cars,
ships, aeroplanes, houses, bicycles and a huge assortment of animals, birds and
fishes. There is a great demand for cats and dogs, and also owls are very
popular.
Top
dealers are always being asked what the next collectable will be. Why shouldn’t
it be silver toys and miniatures? Perhaps everyone is waiting for someone to
bring a boxfull along to BBC1’s Antiques Road Show. Many pieces have
hallmarks on and many more don’t. The scarcity of the toy does affect its
value, but the fact that the Victoria & Albert Museum has one just like it
will no doubt increase its value. Copies of Dutch toys are starting to come on
the market but they look so clumsy and amateurish that only a fool would not recognise
them for what they are.
Although
it is highly desirable to own a silver toy on which the collector can recognise
the maker and when it was made, this should not be a barrier to owning it until
something better comes along.
A
collector is very unlikely to come across a toy from Holland made of any metal
apart from silver, even though the toy may be as black as jet due to the dirt,
and soot it has been exposed to without ever being cleaned.
A serious
collector can find out the going rate for many toys if they concentrate on the
sales at the major auction houses. Christie’s in London will oblige and help a
collector. They may advise you where there is an auction with silver toys
coming up for sale. The Victoria & Albert Museum even has its own book, detailing
the story of Dutch and English toys.6
It would
be a good idea to visit the London Silver Vaults7
in Chancery Lane to see fine examples of silver toys that are very beautiful
and not very expensive. The Silver Vaults is a row of underground shops which
sell nothing but silver. It is most impressive and the silver dealers are very
helpful.
6 Miranda Poliakoff (1980) Silver Toys and Miniatures. London: Victoria & Albert Museum.
7 London Silver Vaults, 53–64 Chancery Lane (corner of Southampton Buildings), London WC2A 1QS (tel: +44(0) 20 7242 3844.
