Dog-chewed antique toy that was saved from the skip sells for £53,000
A dog-chewed doll which was ready to be thrown in the bin has been sold for almost £53,000 at an auction.
Antique experts at Teesside-based auction house Vectis identified the doll as a ‘Kammer & Reinhardt Walter 102 bisque antique character’, a rare toy dating back to 1910 which only goes on sale every 20-30 years.
The doll had suffered some damage on its foot after being previously chewed by a dog, and was estimated to sell for between £12,000-17,000.
But after attracting significant attention at auction, the doll was eventually sold for £52,567. There was interest in the toy from all over the world, with a buyer from Germany losing out to a telephone bid from America.
The unnamed seller previously said the doll belonged to their grandmother, and then their mother.
They said: ‘He has always lived in the living room on the sofa for as long as I can remember and our late dog chewed his foot off when he was a naughty puppy.
‘My mum unfortunately is now unwell and, emptying her house, we found him again.
‘Due to having so much furniture and mementos to sort out, we were having to be quite ruthless with what we were keeping so I put him on the pile of things to be skipped.
‘However, my husband remembered the doll fondly and decided to put him in the ‘to keep pile’ and afterwards we realised how special he was.’
Only a few examples of this larger-sized doll with exquisite modelling, intense expression, and translucent painting are known to exist, making it one of the rarest in the world.
In a 1912 newspaper, they were described as ‘not dolls,’ but rather as ‘real children.’
These antique dolls, crafted with remarkable realism, were based on actual children from the period between 1909 and 1912, and they captivated the hearts of adults rather than children.
According to Vectis Auctions, the sales of these dolls nearly vanished overnight between 1909 and 1914, overshadowed by the production of more popular baby dolls and aesthetically bland ‘pretty’ faced dolls, driven by the war and inflation.
Expert Kathy Taylor, of Vectis, said: ‘It’s amazing that it made that amount of money, but it is a beautiful example of something that is very rare.’
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