The World's Greatest Toy and Train Collection Now At Sotheby's
Throughout January and February, Sotheby’s will exhibit selections from the Jerni Collection, the largest and most comprehensive collection of top quality European and American toys and trains ever assembled. The exhibition takes up an entire floor of Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters, yet remarkably, what is on view represents a mere 20% of the tens of thousands of objects included in the collection. The entire collection is available for private sale through Sotheby’s as a single lot.
The over 35,000 objects in The Jerni Collection were assembled piece-by-piece over a 50 year period by a single dedicated collector who is one of the world’s leading authorities on model trains and toys and who placed an emphasis on quality and condition. The pieces date from roughly 1850–1940, and form an encyclopedic collection of toys and trains from every major European and American manufacturer operating during this period including Märklin, Bing, Ernst Plank Carette and Rock & Graner, chronicling the ‘Golden Age’ of European toy manufacturing. It includes hundreds of unique handmade and historically significant European items, including depictions of actual rail stations, bridges and buildings, many of which were destroyed in the First and Second World Wars.
