The Original Collectors Series: Dallas, TX; Toby Jugs

“This sale is mostly my father’s Toby jugs, which is a collection that started with his mother, father and one of his uncles. That’s how it began, and he added to the collection every year. He used have the jugs sent regularly from Royal Doulton. Even after he passed away in 2001, they kept coming.

That’s only one of his collections, though. My mom was a travel agent, and they went all over the world together. They went on cruises all the time—she was a real cruise expert. They both had a lifelong interest in learning and traveling, and my mom loved to shop, so they were always bringing something back. Sometimes it was so big my dad had to hold it in his lap on the plane ride home.

He was also an avid model railroader. We had a huge basement in our family home growing up in the Chicago area, and one-third of it was devoted to model railroading. He loved the circuit stuff. I think he could have been an engineer.”

Where did your parents display the Toby jugs?

My dad had so many he couldn’t keep them all out at once, so he rotated. About 20 were in the living room, maybe 40 in the den, and the rest would be packed in the attic until he decided to switch them. When my kids were little, they thought they were kind of creepy!

Why did he love them so much?

I think it was a family thing, that his parents had collected them. He would have been so thrilled to see the Everything But the House staff sorting and grouping them for the sale! They were getting really into it, and he would have loved that.

It must be hard to part with them.

It’s been really hard because they meant so much to him. But I couldn’t park the car in my garage because it was full of my parents’ collectibles. Somehow, out of the four siblings, I became the holder of the family archives!

How about the collector’s plates?

They loved the Christmas plates, and the Mother’s Day plates were all over the kitchen around the cuckoo clock, which was another piece they picked up on one of their trips.