All the old toys in the world?

We've been up north for a flying visit this week, partly so that we could drop off a couple of boxes of our tin toys at Vectis in Stockton-on-Tees. Vectis is the largest toy auction house in the world and while we were there we were lucky enough to be shown round.

It was breathtakingly vast -- just one huge room after another piled high with toys of every description. It made our tin toy collection seem very insignificant but they were happy to add it in to the vast stock waiting to be sold.

They generally have one or two sales a week and you can go there to bid in person, but it seems most people bid online. When we were there, the day's sale had just finished and they were starting the massive job of packaging all the sold lots up for dispatch to their new owners.

I couldn't linger too long taking photos as I felt we shouldn't take up too much of the (lovely) staff's time. It was very kind of them to take us round (thank you, John). I didn't know where to look next -- there was so much to see. I'll finish with a few more pictures.

John said that old dolls like these are no longer so sought after -- I'll have them...