And My Wife Complains About My Measely Collection

I avoid the Daily Mail like the plague usually, and I have plenty of gripes about this article, but they seem to have the scoop.

A toy soldier collector in England recently passed away from leukemia at age 55, and now his family is going to send his massive collection to auction.

From the Daily Mail article

Like all Daily Mail articles, this one is scant on specifics, but just from the pictures I can tell that he collected 20mm plastics, 25mm  metal and plastic, plus a wide array of 54mm (classic toy soldier scale... including Britains).    The aircraft hanging from the ceiling appear to be both plastic assembled models as well as multiple types of die casts.

The part that tweaked me is that the auction house expects it could fetch in excess of £10,000 (roughly $14,000US).

Now, I know there's a lot of cheap Taiwanese plastic in a couple of pictures, both in the green army style, but also as knock-off Britains.  But the scrap value of all those metal bases and figures might fetch close to that.

It's a sad reminder of a conversation I see on TMP all the time.  Keep your family in the loop of your hobby, and if they can't, make sure they know which of your friends is morally sound enough to help with the process, even if it's much less than a quarter million figures.