These tea tins are made of nickel plated steel and were once used by tea merchants for different tea samples.

These ones are in excellent condition and so have been selected for machine polishing to bring them up nice and shiny.

The samples allowed tea buyers to taste the consignment of tea that they would be buying at auction.

The first tea auctions were held on the banks of the River Thames in 1679. Direct from the Tea clippers, loaded with their chests of tea returned from Imperial British-owned plantations in the Orient.

Aside from a few years during and after the Second World War, auctions were held in London from 1864 until 1998.

Volumes were so large in the early 1900s that Indian teas were auctioned on Mondays and Wednesdays, Ceylon teas on Tuesdays, and China, Java and other teas on Thursdays.

Even up to the 1960s, the London auctions would take up two or three days.

The last ever auction, in 1998, lasted just 45 minutes.

A perfect vintage curio, of a forgotten time, that makes a lovely keepsake or a unique gift box.

Some have painted numbers, some pressed numbers, and some have letters.


They vary somewhat in size approximately 90x55x35mm - 75x70x40mm