Time to play: Investing in toys

Pity the hard life of a bounty hunter. After years of faithful service to the ‘Empire’, he gets buried in the back garden, has his head chewed by the family dog and is unceremoniously thrown into the garbage. All of which seems a little unfair when all the little guy wants to do is hunt a little bounty for you...

Consigning your Star Wars character to the rubbish tip might also be a bit short-sighted. For according to Krause Publications, publishers of Toy Shop magazine, a rare 12-inch Boba Fett figure issued in 1979 was worth as much as $875 in 2005. And Star Wars figures aren’t the only toys that could offer a fun yet genuinely lucrative form of alternative investment.

An article in the Guardian newspaper recently claimed that if a discerning collector had spent £100 on Dinky Toys in 1985, their investment would have quadrupled over the course of 15 years - a rate of return that puts many other forms of investment in the shade. But investing in toys can be a risky business, and there are no guarantees that your purchases will gain in value. So what hints and tips can Beatthatquote.com offer to potential toy collectors?

1) Know your toys. Some toys are much more valuable than others. Early American cast iron money banks, good quality dolls and vintage teddy bears can all fetch prices exceeding £50,000 at auction today. Dinky vehicles and Hornby trains are also potentially lucrative investments. A rare pre-war H. G. Loose delivery van recently fetched £4,600 at Christies and a Hornby 0 Gauge number two special tank engine locomotive (in mint condition and in its original box) is now worth £650, compared to £350 five years ago.

2) Keep them mint, keep the boxes. Toys that still have their original packaging, or better yet unopened, are worth much more than dinged and dinted examples that have spent years in the family toy box.

In 2003, a Welsh grandmother found out quite how valuable pristine-condition Star Wars figures were worth when she unearthed 20 of the toys, still unopened and in their packaging, which she had bought 25 years previously as spares and replacements for her grandson. The figures - which had originally cost just 49p each - sold for a combined total of just over £10,000. The toys would have been worth a fraction of this had they been opened and/or damaged.

3) Spot rarity. As every collector knows, rarity confers value. One of the reasons the Welsh grandmother’s Star Wars figures were so valuable was because, in addition to their pristine condition, they were comparatively rare. The figures were from 1977, when the first Star Wars film came out, but it wasn’t until the second and third films of the trilogy were released that a cult started to develop and people started collecting the toys. As a result, many people who would have bought the original Star Wars figures would have thrown them away or lost them.

One of the ironies of toy collecting is that those items seen as mass-produced and almost disposable are those toys likely to accrue a lot of value in later years precisely because nobody would have thought to collect them, thereby assuring future rarity. So if you have a boxed Tellytubbies toy in perfect condition, find a safe home for it in the attic - it just might be worth something in 2037!

4) Play the waiting game. If you plan to stockpile modern toys in the hope that they will fetch large sums at auction, it is worth remembering that Christies has only just started selling toys from the 1970s. In order to accrue some value, your investment playthings will have to gather a lot of dust in the attic.

5) Find a garage sale. Score garage sales and fairs for your collectibles. Beware of auctions as the bidding process can sometimes push the price of the toys beyond their real value.

6) Remember the emotional element. As with other forms of collecting, emotion is never fully separated from investment. A business man bidding for that James Bond Aston Martin toy at auction often isn’t just buying an investment, he’s buying a bit of his childhood back. To really maximize your investments you need to know what people are going to want to buy.

As you can see, collecting toys can a genuine form of alternative investment; however, it is worth remembering that fashion can be fickle and that a return on your investment is hardly guaranteed. Also, just because your investments are playthings, it doesn’t mean they are except from things such as capital gains and inheritance tax.

And a final cautionary note - if you do choose to invest in rare toys such as vintage teddy bears, remember to keep them away from dogs. In 2006, a grumpy guard dog called Barney decided to turn on his charge, a £40,000 teddy that used to belong to Elvis Presley, and promptly decapitated it. He also caused £20,000 of damage to 100 other rare bears. His owners suggested that Barney may have been acting in a jealous rage. Whatever the cause, however, a wealth of teds was quickly turned into what onlookers described as a scene of ‘carnage’. You have been warned...

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