Unimaginable Elmer's Toy Assortment Heads to Public sale

WILLOUGHBY, Ohio—The legendary assortment of toys from Elmer’s Auto & Toy Museum, Fountain Metropolis, Wis., heads to public sale Saturday, Oct. 28, at Milestone Auctions. The occasion is the primary in a multi-year collection of quarterly gross sales of 1000’s of toys that enchanted museum guests for almost 30 years.

Elmer and Bernadette Duellman have been married 56 years and amassed one of many biggest auto and toy collections on the earth. Elmer died in 2019.

Picture courtesy of the Duellman household

Elmer and Bernadette Duellman started Elmer’s Auto & Toy Museum in 1994. It shortly grew into some of the spectacular and sprawling collections of vehicles, bikes, pedal vehicles, bicycles, indicators and toys on the earth. Within the fall of 2022, Mecum Auctions handled the sale of the museum’s vast collection of prized cars, a sale that realized $8.5 million.

“We really feel honored to be chosen by the Duellman household to characterize Elmer’s incomparable assortment,” Miles King, co-founder of Milestone Auctions, mentioned. “We all know the toy neighborhood goes to like what’s coming in every successive sale.”

**Alps Japan tin friction Lincoln Futura, with authentic field. Estimate: $2,500-$3,500.**

“It’s not possible to explain how complete Elmer’s assortment is. He had a head begin on all of us,” King mentioned. “Way back to the Nineteen Eighties, Elmer was shopping for and promoting at a speedy tempo and had a small military of pickers from coast to coast who have been at all times looking out for objects of curiosity.”

Duellman was additionally identified for his encyclopedic information of toys. He authored two volumes of the now-classic Elmer’s Value Information to Toys and contributed considerably to Volumes 1 by way of 5 of the Evolution of the Pedal Automotive and Different Using Toys.

“Dad collected loads of pressed metal toys and loads of tin—Japanese, German and American—and car-racing memorabilia and board video games.”plus tether racers, Dinky Toys, TootsieToys and ride-on toys, » mentioned Les Duellman, the oldest of Elmer and Bernadette Duellman’s six kids. « He at all times sought out authentic situation and authentic packing containers as a result of he knew that’s what actually made the piece. He additionally preferred boxed units that have been full with all of their elements current, in addition to ships, airplanes, and automobile and car-racing memorabilia and board video games.”

The initial 818-lot auction begins at 10 a.m. EST, Saturday, Oct. 28. You may preview the sale on the public sale gallery, 38198 Willoughby Parkway, Willoughby, Ohio, in the course of the week previous to the public sale, and from 8-10 a.m. the day of the occasion. Bidding is stay on the gallery, absentee, or stay on-line by way of HiBid (via Milestone’s website), LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, or AuctionZip.