The auction's first session, beginning at 1 p.m. Friday, opens with 150 lots of dolls. While some have low-three-figure presale estimates - such as a Heinrich Handwerck with blue-glass sleep eyes expected to bring $250 to $350 (about what most dolls sell for locally) - a surprising number will bring a lot more. That includes a Kammer & Reinhardt Mein Liebling ($3,500 to $4,500) and two exhibition-size dolls, a 42-inch early Gaultier Bebe ($9,000 to $12,000) and a 39-inch Jules Steiner Bebe with an antique human-hair wig ($12,000 to $15,000). Along with the dolls are dollhouses and related structures, notably a 23-by-23-inch mid-19th-century carved butcher shop with two butchers and an array of meat products ($12,000 to $15,000).
The 526-lot session continues with mechanical banks and doorstops mostly expected to bring three-figure prices, although a doorstop depicting "Sulgrave Manor" in Northamptonshire, England, the ancestral home of George Washington, has a presale estimate of $1,200 to $1,600, and a circa-1885 Kyser & Rex Co. mechanical merry-go-round bank has a presale estimate of $10,000 to $12,000.
Following are more mechanical toys, notably an 1877 Ives clockwork of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant seated on a chair and smoking a cigar ($12,000 to $15,000), and tin and cast-iron vehicles and pull toys, including a circa-1890 Hubley horse-drawn roof seat brake ($10,000 to $12,000).
The Marklin ocean liner will be offered at the second session, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday. It is one of more than two dozen mechanical maritime toys, including models by Fleischmann & Bing and two other Marklins with five-figure presale estimates, the battleship Columbia ($18,000 to $20,000) and the gunboat Valanche ($20,000 to $22,000).
