Inheritances can come in many forms, but for two Perth sisters, their late grandfather’s gift took the form of a small model car – 10,000.
Prominent Perth architect Ralph Drexel once owned the largest collection of miniature toy cars in the Southern Hemisphere.
Entire rooms of his downtown home were devoted to storing his hidden collection, filling every corner with unlabeled boxes.
When he died earlier this year, his collection passed to his granddaughters, Sophie and Rosie Bates.
“We don’t know anything about cars, we don’t know anything about models because that was his hidden passion,” Sophie said.
“We had no idea where to start, we had no idea what to do.
“We didn’t realize this would become a full-time job for us.”
In his will, Ralph stipulated that if the sisters sold his collection, the profits would go to his grandchildren.
In an attempt to secure their children’s future, Sophie and Rosie decided to put their careers on hold and started selling small cars online.
This involves sifting through hundreds of boxes, evaluating each model individually, photographing it, and listing it.
“We knew some of the things he had were really special, so we thought we could do it ourselves,” Rosie said.
The response was overwhelming.
Business boom
Suddenly they were inundated with orders.
“We’ll be calling each other up and saying, ‘Oh my God, did you see how much this sold for?’” Sophie said.
“We had a little plastic car in a box. We put it up for sale for $150, and it kept going up, and we ended up selling it to a guy in Florida for $1,900.”
While enthusiastic collectors opened their wallets, the sisters opened a door to a new world of model cars and all the characters that inhabited them.
The sisters became interested in why customers come to them, many of whom keep their new purchases private.
“It’s like their dirty little secret,” Sophie said.
“Most people say, ‘Oh my wife is going to kill me.’
“It was amazing how many collectors there were in Perth, each with their own niche.”
Order to chaos
WA Model Collectors Club President Ian Hind collects models from the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.
“I’ve been a car enthusiast for a long time… There are no two collectors in the club who collect exactly the same thing,” he said.
“Model cars have been around since the 1930s, so you have almost 100 years of history, and within that you have all kinds of brands, all kinds of scales, all kinds of price points from $2 to $200.”
His neatly stocked closets are a stark contrast to the chaos of Ralph’s stacked boxes.
No matter how people sort their collection, inheriting these small cars can be a heavy burden.
“One of the things I constantly stress to our club members is that you have to take steps to get rid of your collection before it dies,” Mr. Hind said.
“I get phone calls all the time from families of deceased people who have inherited collections and have no idea what they are worth, no idea where to sell them, or how to get started.
“All the credit goes to Rosie and Sophie because I think what they did, [for people] “For someone who knew so little about this hobby, it was quite amazing.”
Surrounded by hordes of small cars day after day, Sophie and Rosie find a surprising joy in work.
“Even though the cars themselves aren’t necessarily our passion, I think they’re really cool and I feel really proud that we worked so hard and didn’t just send them off,” Rosie said.
“I think Ralph would really love to see us work well together and would be really happy with how we sold to them and made what we could.”
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