Great Western Coffee Shop

£12,100 for a British Railways totem, around 20th March 2021 - https://www.gwra.co.uk/auctions/86548/2021mar-lot-573.html

Thanks Graham.   I think the record was previously held by Southend on Sea Victoria which sold for 11k-ish a few years back.  Couldn't find mention in a Google search just now.

I remember when £600 for a totem seemed liked crazy money.......

Not a totem but saw this for sale in a Bath garden reclamation shop on Friday.  I don't think any heritage line runs far enough to use it though.

I'd only really be interested in one for a station that had a special significance for me, but presumably other factors affect the price. Hard to see why Southend Vic or Brecon would command such a high price, even if in perfect nick and rare, but perhaps you need to have a lot of disposable income to understand such things!

Co-incidentally the GWSR have recently made themselves a rather similar milepost to that 91 1/4 one, and could actually have modified the one on sale to get the same result.  I assume they were originally made up from bits of old rail and a wooden head so their one is just as authentic.  See https://draingang.blogspot.com/2022/03/first-too-dry-then-too-wet.html

Re Southend Vic and Brecon, all you need are two determined people with very deep pockets and hey, presto!  It strikes me that many collectors are now of an age where they have paid off their mortgage, have few commitments and hence money to spare.   Whatever floats your boat and it's a free country.

The other aspect is that things may not reappear for a very long time, if they ever do.  My small example of this is a Leatherhead target (Southern Railway).  My working career started in Leatherhead booking office so, as you can understand, I'd quite like one of these. 

As far as I'm aware, only one has ever come up in auction and that was in Kidlington in 1998 (Kidlington was the precursor to Stoneleigh, Warks, run by the same people).  I was there and it was me and the other bidder - I dropped out at £640 and that was that.  Targets were often going for £150-£200 back then but it only takes two and the price can be much more. No complaints, that's how it works.  If one came up now, it might go for £2k or more and I have, frankly, better things to do with that sort of cash which, in any case, would take hitting the credit card big time to achieve. 

Do my various totem shaped fridge magnets count?

No. And these virtual one don't either:

(http://www.wellho.net/demo/totemnew.php?main=MELKSHAM++MANOR&region=0&font=britrln_.ttf&above=&below=)

(http://www.wellho.net/demo/totemnew.php?main=MELKSHAM++NORTH&region=0&font=britrln_.ttf&above=&below=)

(http://www.wellho.net/demo/totemnew.php?main=MELKSHAM++GARDENS&region=0&font=britrln_.ttf&above=&below=)

(http://www.wellho.net/demo/totemnew.php?main=EAST++MELKSHAM&region=4&font=britrln_.ttf&above=&below=)

My surname is also a place name with a station.

Back in 1974, a colleague who passed through each day told me that the Totems had been replaced. I went to Collectors' Corner then at Cardington Street, Euston and bought all three survivors for £18.00, telling my wife gradually and much later.

They are now too valuable to hang outside, of course.

More junk for my executors.

OTC

The signage at Exeter Central did not get updated until the early 1970s. At the time, not a lot of care was taken when disposing of the old signage. I recall a visit there one Saturday when I spied a pile of old signs just left in plain sight under the main footbridge. Nobody batted an eyelid when I helped myself to an old SR totem from the pile.

If I knew then what I know now, I would not have sold it to a collector back in 1990!