Proctor Auctions owner Ronnie Proctor had a busy day auctioning 753 lots from the Southland collector’s hoard, netting the family almost $100,000.
The collector had accumulated more than 7500 Matchbox cars over eight decades, starting when he was about 6 years old and continuing until his recent death in his 80s.
Proctor Auctions owner Ronnie Proctor said he had about 5000 pieces of the collection.
The collector’s family had already sold about 2500 pieces on their own.
Of the 753, 740 lots sold at auction to either the 20 bidders on-site or the 555 who online from all over New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A Volkswagen racer bundled with another car went for the dearest bid at $750 and a few tanks sold for about $600 each.
Mr Proctor said the auction had brought a few Matchbox car collectors "out of the woodwork".
"It’s pretty good for us and it feels good for the vendor."
The collection featured cars from the 1950s to the 2000s.
"There’s some here that are fairly quite rare and valuable — he was collecting for a long, long time," Mr Proctor said.
"It’s been a big labour of love for him."
They were scattered around every room in his home and had to be driven from Invercargill to Dunedin in a reasonably large truck.
For most of Matchbox’s history, the US and UK got the standard black and brown model cars, whereas New Zealand and Australia got the more unique variants.
That fact usually drew a lot of overseas collectors to this corner of the world, Mr Proctor said.
