THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300335
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WAKEFIELD LENGTH: 86 lines
On a rainy, mid-winter afternoon, Donald L. Magee is maneuvering a miniature, remote control tractor around the rambling building that originally was a repair garage for trucks and tractors.
``Ahhh, some kids never grow up,'' he says with a grin, as a visitor walks through the front door.
Magee believes it. He lives it.
Here's a man who wears a Mickey Mouse watch and boasts of having two more just like it at home - one of them an original.
Magee, who also owns a logging company and a trucking company in Sussex County, recently opened The Honey Wagon on Wakefield's main street, U.S. Route 460.
It's a place for children - young and old - to peek into the historic past of toys, especially agricultural toys: tractors, combines, manure spreaders, farm trucks.
Some are originals; some reproductions. Some aren't even for sale. They're just to look at and enjoy.
For Magee, 57, the love of toys goes back to his childhood, when he was growing up on the farm, outside of Wakefield, that his ancestors settledin 1747. He still lives there. And somewhere on the farm, when Magee started thinking about opening the toy store, he found every toy he ever owned.
``In 1947, Dudley S. Robertson, a John Deere dealer, gave me my first metal tractor,'' Magee said. ``I was 8 years old. It's probably worth about $200 now. Back then, we didn't get many toys. We preserved what we had. And, over the years, I've sparingly bought more.''
Other toy enthusiasts don't act so sparingly. Magee said a friend, whom he would rather not identify, has a collection that probably is worth more than $1 million.
``There are lots of farmers, within a few miles of here, with large collections,'' he said. ``These toys are especially appealing to them. People stay in here for hours.''
Because they have always been some of his favorites, Magee specializes in ERTL Toys, metal-cast reproductions of farm machinery. The toy company that is so precise in recreating old tractors and combines is located in Dyersville, Iowa.
Fred Ertl Sr. started making toys in 1945, for his own children. He eventually got a license to produce replicas of the John Deere line. Today, ERTL is an international company with branches all over the world.
Collectible toys, Magee said, grow quickly in value. A John Deere NASCAR produced by ERTL just last year, for example, originally sold for $60. Today, it's featured in The Honey Wagon for $125.
``And it's offered on the Internet for $200,'' Magee said.
A set of six International tractors - probably made sometime in the '60s - still in original boxes sells for $750. A recently issued Farmall tractor made by ERTL, with moving clutch and brakes, costs $129. A slightly larger version of the same model is $159.
Walter Pittman, a 62-year-old Surry County farmer, has been collecting ERTL toys for so long that he's constructing a building separate from his house as a showplace.
Pittman is a member of Toy Farmer and Toy Trucker, a national organization dedicated to collecting agricultural and trucking toys. The organization's monthly magazine announces ERTL's newest toys.
Scattered among the new toys in the Honey Wagon are Magee's very own treasures, what he calls a ``hodgepodge.''
A restored, 1956 Ford pickup sits in one front window. A 1943 John Deere tractor that Magee's family purchased used in 1966, and a manure wagon, the item for which the shop is named, sit together in another.
``This one was never used to haul manure,'' Magee assured. ``We used it to spread peanut vines. But that's what everybody called 'em, honey wagons.''
``This has been much better than I ever expected,'' he said. ``I've had customers call it history being preserved. They come in and say they've seen things they haven't seen in 50 years. I guess I underestimated the power of toys.'' MEMO: The Honey Wagon, across the street from the Virginia Diner in
downtown Wakefield, is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through
Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
The telephone number is (757) 899-8507. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
JOHN H. SHEALLY II
The Virginian-Pilot
ABOVE: Donald L. Magee and his tractors: one made by ERTL Toys and a
real John Deere tractor that was used on Magee's family farm. BELOW:
A detailed "Farm Talk" set of farmers anda dog, and an early
steel-wheeled John Deere tractor.