John Deere miniatures a 'passion' for collector

BY JOHN DECOSTE

Tim Maxner isn’t ashamed to say he plays with toys.

The Canning man has been collecting John Deere cast aluminum miniatures since he started working for John Deere 26 years ago. He currently has “over 700 pieces,” some of the more interesting of which are currently on display at the Kings County Museum. “You might say my day job is selling John Deere, and my ‘night job’ is collecting the toys,” he says. “I couldn’t ever collect all the toys they’ve made – I don’t have a building that large – but I do have some fairly unique ones in my collection.”

Maxner also collects John Deere belt buckles and printing plates from the late 19th century, some of which are also part of the exhibit. For about seven or eight years in the late 90s, the company produced NASCAR miniatures, “and I have some of them, too.”

Each miniature is precision-built, and an identical scale model of the original piece of John Deere machinery. “Most cast aluminum toys have some detail, but not this much,” he said. “The precision ones are my personal favorite.”

Maxner acknowledged he “enjoys the look of farm equipment, the job it has done over the years and continues to do. It helps if you know the equipment and what it’s done in the field.”

Restores old toys

Maxner also restores old toys “I’ve been given or reclaimed from somewhere. I like the restoration. To take a toy and restore it back to its original condition is really satisfying.”

One toy on display at the museum “took me 15 hours to restore. You put it together, then you paint it, and they’re not spray-painted, they’re glass-beaded, and it can take a while.”

Another of his toys “I got while on a business trip to Indiana. I saw it at a yard sale – you can pick out ‘John Deere green’ anywhere – and paid $10 for it.”

Toy collecting is more popular than one might think. “There are some pretty serious collectors in the U.S. and in Ontario. One of my favorite trips was to Dyersville, Iowa. I stopped at the toy museum there and spent a full half day in the museum alone.”

Asked why he enjoys collecting and restoring toys, Maxner replied, “they’re a piece of history. That’s the story behind the exhibit. Most of the items in the display are the old toys, and some represent models from the early 1900s, including the ‘Waterloo Boy,’ the first tractor John Deere built that ran on kerosene.”

A great company

Maxner acknowledges a lot of the lure of the toys for him springs from the fact that John Deere “is a great company to work for.” In addition, “it’s a really well-known brand – one of the most recognizable in the world – that has a long association with this area.”

He added that toy collecting “is a very unique hobby. I really enjoy the toys. It’s a hobby that’s not only fun, it takes me places I might not otherwise have gotten.”

One set of John Deere miniatures from 1960 “are still in the original packaging. I bought them in an antiques store in Ottawa many years ago.”

The vintage toys “make great conversation pieces. People, especially young people, like to look at them.” He noted, “they’d like to play with them, too, but no one plays with my toys, not even me. I handle them very carefully when I handle them at all.”

Maxner’s John Deere exhibit will be on display at the Kings County Museum until it closes for the season Dec. 20. For more information on this and any other current exhibits, contact the museum at 678-6237 or visit its website at www.okcm.ca.