Action Man and Star Wars figurines sell for £180,000 at auction

Unsold and unwanted Action Man and Star Wars figures, kept for decades by a retired toy salesman, have been snapped up by collectors at an auction which raised more than £180,000.

One telephone bidder paid out a total of £6,480 for a rare Action Man judo outfit, which retailed for just 12 shillings, or 60p, when it went on sale in 1970.

A boxed Star Wars Death Star fetched £5,280 while a Princess Leia doll was sold for £3,600. Publicity photographs for a figure of feared bounty hunter Boba Fett, complete with Mandolarian armour, made more than £2,300 when the estimate had been just £40-£60.

The majority of the 605 lots belonged to former sales rep Doug Carpenter, 88, who, when toy firm Palitoy ceased trading, was allowed to keep unsold stock and stored boxes of it in his loft and garage.

When he and his wife, Daphne, heard about a Boba Fett figure selling for £18,000 earlier this year, they handed over the collection to their son, Paul, 51, to sell.

Kathy Taylor, a valuer for specialist auctioneers Vectis Auctions in Thornaby, Teesside, said: “It was unbelievable to see all the boxes coming out with stock that was factory fresh, which hadn’t been opened, it was like a time capsule.”

Even empty boxes and factory notes were of value. One lot of Palitoy paperwork sold for £2,500, while a box which had once contained Star Wars figures, made £160.

“Factories sent toys out in what were called trade cartons and these, from the 1970s and 1980s, can be very rare. They are rarer than the items themselves,” said Taylor.

The auction also contained lots by two former designers at the toy manufacturers.

Action Man sporting goods were relatively poor sellers in the 1970s as children preferred to see him in military uniform. But that unpopularity now makes such outfits more valuable as fewer of them remain. A mis-carded box – a cricket outfit on an Olympic Champion cards, which was mislabelled when it was made – sold for £2,760.

Meanwhile, a Tammy doll – Pippa’s friend – which was estimated at between £40-£60, sold for £2,760.

“A lot of the value is down to the packaging, they are very scarce in shop stock condition,” said Taylor. “These are very unusual in that they have come out of trade boxes, so they are shop stock”.

Action Man was originally based on the US Hasbro 1964 figure, GI Joe, and produced and sold in the UK from 1966. The figures were a best-seller. Palitoy ignored the debate at the time on whether boys should be playing with a doll, but they banned the word “doll” when discussing the new toy.