#Roberto Yukio Shimizu

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The time-worn  Toy Collectors

‘Collections collect collectors’. Every object in a collection contains its own history , uniqueness and memory of the collector. Antique collections are rare and precious and are sometimes kept for auctions. No one ever forgets a toy that made them extremely happy as a child , even if that is replaced by one like it that is much nicer. Here comes 5 of famous antique toy collectors…

Chuck connor:

             He is an old man but not for his collection.He is an avid antique toy collector with most of of the rare and expensive toys.His obsession over toys has taken over his house – in the shelves,hall,bathroom,ceiling-his house is filled with thousands of toys. It started 50 years ago when he bought his 2-year-old son a toy train. The toddler went on to become a locomotive engineer. And Conner went on to become an avid collector.His collection of vintage toys is worth about $3 million. For 50 years, he has collected them all: trains, planes and automobiles, wind-up characters, boats, and circus toys, too. Most are from before World War II, and the average price for one today is a couple hundred dollars. Despite the value, Conner has no insurance on his toys. Every day there will be people waiting to watch his collection.He likes to show of his collection.

Bert Cohen:

         There was a time when marbles were the greatest possessions a child ever had.This marble love made Bert Cohen to collect them for a lifetime .His collection includes – old , new, handmade ,mass produced ones. Till now he has collected over  300,000 marbles.His first marble was a German made sulphite with image of rooster given to him 45 years ago by an antiques dealer who told him that collecting marbles was a way to have fun with his children . He discovered that marbles aren’t just for games children play.The oldest and rarest variety date to ancient Egypt.

Donald Kaufman:

                Kaufman began collecting antique toys in 1950. His hobby began slowly at first. "It took me a long time to really get started, but I did. I'd buy a few toys a year; it took me a long time to spend $100."His collecting really took off after he met his second wife, Sally, whom he married in the early 1980s, and retired from the toy business. The two traveled around the Eastern U.S. to toy shows and auctions, often with a rented U-Haul trailer hitched to the back of their Ford Econoline van. But not all the toys can fit on the shelves. The collection includes scores of pedal cars that children once rode in.

              There are about 7,000 toys, some more than 100 years old, many of them cars and trucks, a good number of them in just-out-of-the-box condition.

 Roberto Yukio Shimizu :

                  The six-hall museum housing the antique toy collection is a no-frills building. Large toys hang outside on the facade. The three-storey museum has on show 40,000 pieces, most of them manufactured between 1920 and 1970 and 71-year-old Shimizu has even more toys stored in three warehouses. He began collecting toys at age 10.

“Fantastic. Very exciting and very interesting. It is like an art project,” wrote Sally Timms, from the United States. Jorge Cuenca, another visitor wrote: “The collections are complete. There is no order, but it’s cool.” One of the upcoming exhibits being planned at the Mexican Antique Toy Museum is a show of between 3,000 and 4,000 German toys made by the Maerklin, Schuco, Fleischmann and Bing toy companies. These antique pieces were manufactured soon after the Second World War.

Max Berry:

Berry’s collections, toys and mechanical banks may be closest to his heart. He started with marbles as a child and graduated to banks as an adult, buying a William Tell bank, his first, at a show in Pottstown, Penn., in 1967. His collection, which initially occupied a third-floor guest room in the couple’s Georgetown townhouse, eventually encompassed entire walls of custom-built floor-to-ceiling shelves.

“He wanted to have every mechanical bank and nearly succeeded. Many are unique examples,” says Rich BertoiaAccording to Berry, his toy collection numbers 1,700 to 2,000 pieces in all, of which 700 are mechanical banks.

Interested in magic tricks as a child, Berry, going by the name “Magic Max,” The banks were probably worth $50,000 at the time. Max Berry’s guest included Israel’s future prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

“Every experience, good or bad, is a priceless collector's item”

-Isaac Marion.

So lets start collecting and write histories.