Toy museum at auction

We remember them all like it was yesterday – whether our favourite toy was Barbie, a lead car, Kay Bojesen’s wooden monkey or the Pez pastille dispenser with the American cartoon characters on top. At Nordsjællands Legetøjsmuseum, you could until recently relive your childhood memories and be reunited with your old toys again. 

Denmark’s biggest toy collection

In 1997, Hilda Svane opened her museum of antique toys in a wing at her and her husband’s old farm “Skovgård”, which is located in scenic surroundings in North Zealand. The museum proved extremely popular, and the need for the collection to be extended to include newer toys led to another 300 m2 wing being taken into use. Throughout the years, Hilda Svane has constantly been on the lookout for new treasures at flea markets and antique shops and has built up a large network of Danish and international toy collectors. Over the 17 years that the museum existed, the collection grew to become Denmark’s largest.

A personal passion

The museum was the result of Hilda Svane’s strong passion for toys, which started in the late 1970s:

“You could say that I am a born collector. Since I was a child, I have collected everything, and at the age of two, I would sit in my childhood home and neatly lay out my collections under the piano. Later, I narrowed down my interest in collecting to toys, and it is the cultural history and the development of toys through the ages that fascinates me,” explains Hilda Svane. 

Across the generations

For Hilda Svane, the aim of the museum was that several generations could come and visit it together and all find something they could relate to. The collection therefore spans from around 1850 to the toys of today. Handmade German wooden figures from Erzgebirke are some of the museum’s oldest toys, but the collection also represents everything from Tekno’s popular boys’ toys made of lead and the 1980’s rubiks cubes to new robots and Disney characters. 

Hilda Svane’s personal favourites from the collection include the so-called “prison toy”, which was made by prisoners and sold on the Danish market from 1905 until the 1970s. Another of her favourites she points out is the collection of unique Greenlandic toys that she was given by a friend who was married to the Governor of Greenland, N.O. Kristensen.
 
By Hilda Svane’s own admission, she now intends “to stop playing” and devote her resources to travelling, but there is no doubt that we are dealing with true lifeblood when we put the collection from Nordsjællands Legetøjsmuseum under the hammer. It is therefore Hilda Svane’s greatest wish to see her vast collection find a new home where the owner is passionate about toys, and they will be well looked after.   

Auction and collection

The collection will be sold as one, on Thursday 11 September 8 pm. A preview can be arranged by appointment with Hilda Svane on tel. +45 2482 9840.

Welcome toy enthusiasts one and all!

View all items up for auction