An Extremely Rare Wilkins Street Sweeper

Wednesday, May 27,2020

Sunny

37 C.  99 F

(A record-breaking high temperature)

An Extremely Rare

Wilkins Street Sweeper

Please click here to visit the listing this fine seller on ebay, and this fine listing

It's not often that I see a toy with the price set at 5 digits , being offered on ebay! So naturally I was curious to see what the toy was all about. It turns out that it's a Wilkins street sweeper made in the 1890's, It's a cast iron toy, that's in very good condition for being 100 or more year old.

It's length is 12 1/2" (317 mm).

I contacted the owner and asked for permission to use the photos, and to write about the fine toy. As it turned out, the owner of the toy is Mr. Aaron Phelps, whose ID on ebay is apbubba1.

Aaron's photos are excellent, so that I had very little work to improve them, but for resizing them to a smaller size.

In Aaron's own words:

"I've done some searching and it looks to me this was the last one to sell since 2005.  From a collection out of Minnesota. I don’t believe there is too many that are still around.  Thanks Aaron Phelps."

It's amazing that the bristles for the street sweeper are still  

on the toy, and that the letters (D.P.W.) standing for Department of Public Works

are also still on the toy. 

From this photo below, you can see a brown string

that is attached between the rear left axle of the toy, and the 

bristle gear on the shaft of the wheel.

The 2 photos below help you to better understand

how the sweeper rotates along the surface that it is  cleaning.

If anyone has some information about the Wilkins company, 

please send me the reference so that I can add it to this post.

So that's it for today, having written this second post.

I hope that this fine toy will sell, and that someone will enjoy

owning it.

Have a great part of the day or night.

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com