In Focus: More Than 18,000 Vintage Toys Featured At Remer Estate Sale

Think of your favorite toy. Maybe it was a Cabbage Patch Kid from the ’80s, or a Furby from the ’90s. Of course, you can’t forget your vintage cars. Whatever it is, there’s one home in Remer that just might have the item you’re thinking about.

“This gentleman and his wife collected toys for the last 40 years, and so inside the home there’s just packed with stuff. We have people from Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota, North Dakota. A lot of those people that have come here for this four-day event,” says Steve Foy, owner of S. Thomas & Associates Estate Sales.

The S. Thomas Estate Sales staff has liquidated a lot of homes, but they say this is definitely one of the biggest and most unique sales they’ve ever seen. It took the team 40 days just to go through all the items and figure out pricing.

“So we do all of our comparison and pricing for what the items have sold for. Just in this sale we had over 1,000 hours of research,” says Matt Foy, salesman with S. Thomas & Associates Estate Sales.

The estate sale started off with more than 18,000 items, and of course, most of them were classic toys that date back decades, but one of the biggest draws of the sale were the dozens of antique pedal cars.

“There were over 100 pedal cars, and 50 of those were restored by Bob Olsen and he had restored pedal cars for toy museums, so to find a collection like that, I believe it’s the only collection like this in the nation,” says Matt.

The S. Thompson team is expecting a large crowd the three-day weekend. Today was the only the first day, and Steve Foy says cars were lined up the night before to get their first pick of items. Customers say it’s truly a unique sale.

“It was a fabulous sale. It’s hard to find this much stuff in one area and I bought a visible gas pump, some great porcelain signs. Just a mixture of really fun stuff that’s just hard to find,” says Don Handeland, a customer.

The sale will last through Memorial Day. If you’re interested, you can find the house right on Highway 200 in Remer.

“If you’re up north for the weekend, it’s kind of rainy out, kind of cloudy, come on in. It’s all indoors, it’s not outside,” says Steve Foy.