Coca-Cola Porcelain sign, 1930s

The Zacke family collection of tinplate signs, tin boxes, cigarette tins, advertising displays and mannequins, vending machines, money banks, vintage posters, and automatons is unique in Europe. The auction is a global highlight for collectors of vintage advertising material. View Results

The sought-after collection has developed over more than twenty years and is now made up of roughly 1,300 exclusively original exhibits from the years 1880-1970. The variety of the collection shows the development of advertising in all its details. Individual sections are devoted to style epochs such as Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Cubism, Bauhaus or Modernism as well as to the important industrial sectors of the time.

The items in the sale reveal the history of a series of major brands, some of which have fallen into oblivion while others now belong to the most popular brands in the world. The economic depression and the Wirtschaftswunder, as well as eras of war and peace, are clearly reflected by the advertising art of the 20th century. Among the many famous brands widely represented in the sale are Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sunkist, Pez, Wrigley's, Standard Oil (Mobil, Esso), Shell, PanAm, TWA, Ovaltine, Pall Mall, and His Master's Voice (HMV).

Already in his youth, Alexander Zacke was fascinated by the colour and shine of antique advertising signs that still marked the face of little towns and villages in those days. Together with his wife Susanne, he started developing his present collection back in 1987. From 1992 to 2001, the couple also held 22 special auctions with advertising art and enamel signs. The catalogues published for that purpose - with a total of around 5,000 pages - are now used as reference books by collectors all over the world. Together, they also wrote the book Emailschilder und Alte Reklame [Porcelain Signs and Advertising Art], a standard work published by the German Heyne-Verlag in 1996.

All items will be auctioned with NO RESERVE. The estimated value of the entire collection is roughly US $1,000.000.00. A full colour catalogue with 248 pages can be ordered from Auktionshaus Loesch / "Wormser Spielzeugauktionen" (Tinplate Toy Auctions) immediately.

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