Donald Kaufman, 79; amassed valuable toy car collection

Donald Kaufman, whose trove included a highly prized 1912 Marklin live-steam fire engine before he began auctioning off his treasures in March, died Oct. 12 at his home in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 79.

The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Sally, said.

More than 7,000 cars and trucks were parked bumper to bumper on the plain white shelves that Mr. Kaufman had bought at The Home Depot and assembled himself, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, in the four-level annex to his modest country home in Western Massachusetts. There were also airplanes and a smattering of other vintage toys.

His collection was only distantly related to the hundreds of thousands of modern toys, mostly made of plastic, that Mr. Kaufman had helped to sell over the years as vice president of the KB Toys store chain, from which he retired in 1981. Some of the pieces he owned, like the Marklin steam engine, were detailed works of art that actually worked.

Mr. Kaufman owned vehicles of all kinds: taxicabs (small, medium, and large), old trucks bearing signs for brands from long ago (Richfield Gasoline, Filene’s Sons, Sheffield Farms Sealect), ice trucks, water trucks, dump trucks, and fire engines. Mostly, they were made of cast iron, tin, and pressed steel. A white, windup “Gordon Bennett’’ race car, made around 1910 by Guntherman in Germany, had a small bellows connected to the rear axle on the underside, so that it could still emit a rumble nearly a century after it was made.

“He owned almost every known variation of every known automotive toy,’’ said Richard Bertoia of Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, N.J., which is handling the sale of the Kaufman fleet. “Among collectors, he has been clearly declared the most important force this hobby has ever seen.’’

In June, three months after the first in what is to be a series of auctions, Mr. Kaufman guided a reporter for The New York Times through what he and his wife called “the museum,’’ pointing out, however, that only about two dozen other people had ever been inside.

Asked why he was letting go of his beloved toys, he simply said, “It’s time for me to sell.’’

And sell they have. At the first session, in March, about 1,400 of the 7,000 toys brought in $4.2 million, well above the $3 million that had been estimated. A 3-foot-long train of hand-painted clown cars drew the highest price, $103,500.

At the second session, in September, about 1,100 toys were auctioned, bringing in approximately $3 million. The 1912 Marklin fire engine - 18 inches long, with an exposed boiler and intricate gear work in an open frame - drew the highest price, $149,500. Three more sessions are planned, the first next April.

“These aren’t my toys,’’ Mr. Kaufman said in June. “I am just taking care of them.’’

Donald Lewis Kaufman was born in Pittsfield on Oct. 8, 1930, one of three children of Harry and Ruth Klein Kaufman. In 1922, his father and uncle started a wholesale company, Kaufman Brothers, that distributed a variety of goods, including candy, soda, stuffed animals, watches, and razors.

After attending North Adams State College in Massachusetts and serving in the Army in the early 1950s, Mr. Kaufman joined the family business. In 1958, Kaufman Brothers expanded into retail. It became KB Toys in the 1960s and entirely a retailing operation in 1972. As vice president, Mr. Kaufman played a role in expanding the chain to malls in almost every state. KB was sold to the Melville Corp. in 1981 and went out of business in 2008.

Mr. Kaufman’s first marriage, to the former Faith Dichter, ended in divorce. Besides his second wife, the former Sally Golden, he leaves his sister, Joan Poultridge; three daughters from his first marriage, Suzanne Ascioti, Deborah Mager, and Judith Wortzel; and four grandchildren from his first marriage. He also leaves a stepson, Jack Roche; a stepdaughter, Mary Ellen Simon; and five step-grandchildren.

A deep fascination impelled Mr. Kaufman’s collecting.

“He didn’t just see a toy,’’ his wife said. “He would look at that toy and think about the history. He thought about what it was made of, the design, the people who sat there and made it. He would hold it and say, ‘If only it could talk.’ ’’