Alongside these items, your dusty, old toybox might include a selection of Thomas the Tank Engine wooden Brio trains bought for your son as recently as 2000.Most people would expect the Coronation collection to raise the cash, given the royal link and the fact these items go back 50 years In fact, the very recent Brio series is more valuable. That could mean losing out on a decent profit.If you do have a valuable item, the best way to cash in is likely to be through an auction. The auction house's experts will give you an idea of exactly what you might raise and, at the sale, collectors can bid the price up to its full value.In addition to your local auction house, there are many specialist firms around the country, as well as the big London auctioneers. You may not know the true value of what you own, but there will be a potential buyer out there who does.

The eight Thomas the Tank Engine models could raise as much as £200, compared with just £20 for the royal stuff.Value is essentially a product of rarity rather than age, though fashions in the collecting world are crucial, too.The internet is a good place to start valuing your junk - a quick search on eBay, the world's largest online auction site, would have quickly shown you the true value of your Coronation items versus the Thomas trains.But it's crucial to do your research before setting off for the local car boot sale. "We believe it was one of the first gollies ever made in around 1913," she says. "They have occasionally come up for sale over the past 80 years, but never in such exceptional condition."The question is, how do you spot this hidden treasure? It's often the most unexpected items that have real value.Let's say you have a box of Queen Elizabeth Coronation souvenirs, or the original Coronation programme from 1953. Kathy Taylor, of Vectis Auctioneers, has just raised £5,200 for the owner of a rare Steiff golliwog found in a London house clearance. Her local auction house, Woolley & Wallis, identified the figure as the earliest English porcelain blue-and-white figure known to exist - it is expected to raise £50,000 at auction next month.Such windfalls are more common than one might think. But drawing the money and depositing it in a decent savings account would produce £31,115 - only £1,191 less.In other words, the price for the flexibility of having pension cash at your disposal is pretty small. For many people - anyone who is absolutely sure they will have no need of their state pension, even in an emergency - this price is likely to be worth paying..

If you can't face spring-cleaning your house this year, take inspiration from the tale of a 70-year-old homeowner from Salisbury who will soon be £50,000 better off following a clearout. In return, they get a higher weekly rate when they do start taking the money.But on Wednesday, the Government began pitching a more generous offer - lump-sum payments of £30,000 or more for pensioners who defer.Ministers are keen to persuade more people to work later in life, as part of solutions to the pensions crisis. But figures from the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI), an independent think-tank, show that the offer of a cash lump sum (paid at the end of the period of deferment) may be much less generous than it first appears.It points out that if you don't need your state pension when it falls due, the alternative to deferral is to invest the cash each week in a savings account.A 65-year-old man who is entitled to a pension of £105 a week would get a Government lump sum of £32,306 in return for deferring for five years. Savers worried by poor returns on the stock market have been flooding into bricks and mortar, despite the unsustainable price increases of recent years. Property has become the latest sure thing.Too many investors have not thought buy-to-let through. For example, they would be unable to pay the mortgage if they struggled to find tenants.