Toy Auction Rakes High Moolah

The Guest of honour  for  the Mechanical Bank Collectors of America  Convention  was not any distinguished  individual entity but a  collection of 489  incredibly rare mechanical banks .It was the Stephen and Marilyn Steckbeck collection. The antique banks and   related ephemera   set a new level in the sphere of toy auction.   A near-mint-plus example of J. & E. Stevens cast-iron Jonah and the Whale/Jonah Emerges bank led the sale’s top 10 with a selling price of $414,000. The late-1880s moneybox depicting Biblical character Jonah being expelled from the mouth of a whale flew past its $150,000-$200,000 estimate to become the second-most-expensive mechanical bank ever sold at public auction. The toy auction had crossed a grosser of  $7.7 million an all time high ever placed.

Acknowledged by experts as one of the all-time greats, the Steckbeck collection was built over a 53-year period, and was seeded with rarities from earlier collections of now-historic stature, e.g., those of corporate CEO Edwin H. Mosler Jr., automobile titan Walter P. Chrysler and pioneer collector F.H. Griffith. There are buying opportunities to please every pocketbook, but because there are so many unique or extremely rare examples included in the collection, some observers are speculating the sale could end up grossing between $5 million and $8 million. In that becomes the case, the Steckbeck sale will make its mark in history as not only the highest-grossing bank auction ever, but also the highest-grossing toy auction of all time. An 1886 Kyser & Rex Mikado illusionist bank and an 1880s Charles A. Bailey bank depicted   an African American boy having caught a fish  at the end of his pole touted  for the  second place  achieved  $287,500. Another tie landed two items in the third-place slot: an 1888 Stevens bank in which an African-American man kicks a football over a watermelon, and an 1880s Kyser & Rex Roller Skating bank. Each of the banks realized $195,500.

The Internationally renowned SteckBeck collection   with its high profile sale has attracted pioneers of bank collectors and dealers from   all over the world.

The Highest grossing toy auction was worth  $7.7 million and was set by SteckBeck Collection at  Denver, Pennsylvania, United States of America on October 2, 2007.