Model ship fetches a small fortune

A 37.5-inch replica of the ill-fated Lusitania, the star lot in an auction of antique toys collected by the late Malcolm Forbes and his sons, sold for $194,500 (€180,000) at Sotheby’s in New York in 2010, a record for a toy boat sold at auction.

The publishing magnate bought it in 1983 for $28,600.

A 19th-century toy gunboat made in Germany in the 1880s fetched $134,500, failing to reach its low estimate of $150,000. The largest boat in the Forbes collection, the 47-inch-long French battleship Andre, was expected to go for $300,000. It failed to sell.

However, a German-made 1905 vessel known as the Plank “King Edward VII” Clockwork Battleship, sold for $68,500, above the top estimate of $45,000. It was bought for a client by Stuart Waldman, a New York antique-toy dealer, who sold it to a Forbes representative for $2,250 thirty years prior.

- Bloomberg

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