Probate News – Model Village Discovered Inside Worcester Park Home

A Complete Model Village Found In Bedroom Of Worcester Park Home

My latest Probate valuation of house contents took me to Cheam Common Road, Worcester Park, Surrey. Its always interesting carrying out valuations as I never know what I’m going to discover but this was a real surprise. The whole house was like a giant model village, almost every shelf, table, and flat surface had a model cottage or house on it. The models were from the well known Lilliput Lane Collection and were quite unusual due to their rarity.

Leaving them to one side I proceeded to value the other contents which consisted of quite a lot of brown furniture as we say in the trade, along with some nice collectables and curios. I finished downstairs and made my way up to the bedrooms to find more collectable cottages on the landing covering an ottoman or blanket box at the top of the stairs, then as I entered the box bedroom I was confronted with a large collection of Hornby locomotives laid out nicely on shelves around the small room.

Lilliput Lane Cottages

But the biggest surprise was when i entered the two larger bedrooms to find a hoard of model cottages, so many that they were covering the beds. so I have no idea where the gentleman slept. The boxes for all the models were stacked inside the wardrobes along with the important deeds which without would devalue the collection considerably. The collection was impressive and consisted of many obsolete, retired and rare examples, so I arranged for a specialist auctioneers to contact the excutor with a view to sending them all to auction. The value of the house contents was a modest £850, but I estimated the market value for the purposes of probate of this Lilliput collection to be worth a figure of £7000. A nice surprise for the beneficiaries. One thing to note about these type of collectables is that condition and having original box and deeds, as without or if they have even minor damage they become almost worthless, so if you are a collector or thinking about starting then bear this in mind

Jeffrey Avery – Probate Valuation In Worcester Park – 1st March 2018