MORE than 720 tokens and tickets issued in the 19th and 20th centuries from County Durham, Teesside and Northumberland will be offered up at auction.

The collection, that was amassed by the late Jeffery Gardiner, has been sold by Dix Noonan Webb auctioneers in four parts over the past four to five years. However, this section focuses on the North-East.

Comprising 36 lots including many scarce examples, estimates range from £600 to £30.

A group of tokens relating to Newcastle is expected to fetch £400-600, while a group devoted to Northumberland carries an estimate of £300-400. Another one for Bishop Auckland is estimated at £120-150.

Jeffrey Gardiner was born in 1940 and he and his twin brother Clive were educated at Fencehouses school, near Houghton-le-Spring.

At the age of 15 he left to become an apprentice electrician in a nearby coal mine, but mining was not his scene and, apprenticeship completed, he joined the Royal Signals as an electrician, a trade he was to follow all his life, both in the North-East and in France and Germany.

Mr Gardiner’s interest in numismatics began when he was a teenager.

A collector throughout his working life, it was not until after retirement that the hobby became his passion.

Of all his numismatic interests, it was tokens and medals where his knowledge was profound.

He made a particular study of Edward Herdman, the Bishop Auckland curio dealer and lay preacher brutally murdered on New Year’s Eve 1934.

Peter Preston-Morley, specialist and associate director, Dix Noonan Webb, said: “The Jeffrey Gardiner collection includes the best such group of local tokens and tickets issued in the 19th and 20th centuries from County Durham, Teesside and Northumberland ever to have been offered at auction.

“There are over 720 different pieces in all, including large groups from Newcastle, Darlington, Gateshead, Sunderland, South Shields, Middlesbrough and the other major conurbations, but many of the local mining and coastal villages are represented as well – even the Barnard Castle school tuck-shop.”

The pieces will be sold in a live online auction on Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 10am on Dix Noonan Webb’s website DNW.co.uk