This July 3, 2014 photo shows military vehicles, part of the Jacques Littlefield Collection, displayed at the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation in Portola Valley, Calif. More than 80 tanks amassed by Littlefield are set to go up for sale in the San Francisco Bay Area in what is being billed as one of the largest auctions of military vehicles ever.

PORTOLA VALLEY — The tank took two direct hits at the end of the Cold War that hurt its reputation more than any battlefield defeat. The first blow was the image of Michael Dukakis grinning as he clung to a tank turret while running for president in 1988. Less than a year later, the standoff at Tiananmen Square between a column of Chinese army tanks and a lone man, who refused to let them pass, electrified the world.

But this week, the tank makes its triumphant return to glory -- its big guns metaphorically blazing -- when the majority of what is believed to be the largest collection of armored military vehicles on the planet is auctioned at the formerly private playground of collector Jacques Littlefield, a Stanford grad who turned his boyhood hobby into an obsession, and had the family fortune to make it possible. The auction will feature upwards of 80 tanks, although exactly how far upward, even Bill Boller, who has overseen the collection for the past five years, isn't sure. "There are more" tanks, he says, "than I ever bothered to count."

The collection, housed in 10 large buildings at the top of a hill from which it's possible to see the entire Peninsula, will be open to the public for viewing Wednesday and Thursday. The auction -- open only to registered bidders -- takes place Friday and Saturday near the end of Old Spanish Trail. And though there is no minimum bid required on most items, collectors will need an up-armored credit line to take home an M4 "Jumbo" Sherman tank, expected to fetch bids of about $1.6 million. A German Panzer IV has an estimated value of $2.6 million, the highest in the collection.

Auctions America declined to reveal the names of registered bidders -- though Boller did say "there are some names you would know" -- but if North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un is in the hair-trigger gallery Saturday, he might be interested in three pieces that were built to launch a nuclear warhead before being de-militarized. The Russian-made 203-millimeter Pion mobile cannon is the largest land-based gun ever built, able to lob a nuke 20 miles. And here's a friendly reminder to post on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook wall: a pair of Scud missile launchers in his front yard could turn Zuck into the "Scud Stud" of social media.

"We have a tremendous amount of interest from people who have never owned even a Jeep before, who are interested in a Sherman tank or half-track," says Rob Collings, CEO of the Collings Foundation, to which the entire collection was donated last year. Collings' organization will build a 66,000 square foot military vehicle museum in Stow, Mass., with the $10 million it expects to make from the auction. "These things stormed the beaches at Normandy," Collings says, "and had a profound impact on the world we live in today."

Camo-colored jewels

At the time of his death from cancer in 2009, Littlefield was building his tank corps so quickly that it appeared he might be preparing to invade Palo Alto. Huge trucks hauled German Panzers, American-made Sherman tanks and the odd nuclear missile launcher to his hilltop ranch at a rate of one a week, forcing him to scatter some battle wagons around the 450 acre estate like armor-plated lawn jockeys. Most are operational, but some haven't moved in more than a decade.

These are big boy toys, so size matters. The heaviest and widest tank in the collection is the British Conqueror, a mighty beast at 72 tons. Adolf Hitler touched off World War II by invading Poland with an armada of lightweight Panzers -- also well represented in the collection -- but der Fuhrer always seemed to be over-compensating for something. As the war widened, he pushed the size of some Nazi tanks to 120 tons. "It was a really stupid idea," Boller says, because the Allies soon were meeting every German supertank with lightning quick columns of rolling thunder.

Some 75 to 80 vehicles from Littlefield's vast motor pool will make up the core collection at the new museum. The jewel of the camo-colored crown, which is headed for the museum after Littlefield spent seven years restoring it, is a Panzer V that is believed to have been in retreat from the Russian front when it attempted to cross a frozen river that turned out to be less frozen than the Germans thought. It sank to the bottom of the river, where it remained for 50 years, until it was meticulously restored, down to its cloth-coated wiring. Littlefield only lived long enough to see it fired up one time. Says Boller, "It was his pride and joy."

Another 114 pieces of military history will be for sale, although those are hardly the collection's castoffs. When everything else is gone Saturday, five special pieces with minimum-bid reserves will provide the auction's closing drama.

Philosophy of 'yes'

Littlefield graduated from Stanford and after a short stint working for Boller's engineering group at Hewlett-Packard, he retired to his ranch -- once owned by San Francisco Mayor "Sunny Jim" Rolph -- to oversee the family fortune, made in construction and mining.

In 1983, Littlefield bought his first Stuart tank. "A week later he bought a Sherman," Boller says. "The way he described it, owning tanks was like eating popcorn -- you can't have just one. His collection philosophy was 'yes.' What he cared about was having something rare. He would say, 'Rare is when there's only one in the world and I have it.' He did love that."

Colin Rixon, a tanker who spent 32 years in British army, then enlisted for another 15 years in the American tank corps when he was 55, spent much of the past year restoring the collection's Centurions and Conquerors in anticipation of the auction. (Fun fact! British tanks are often designed with a small cubby for brewing tea next to the commander's seat.) He considers Littlefield a hero. "Without him doing this collection," Rixon says, "these things would be Coke cans."

One of the highlights of Littlefield's annual 4th of July party was the moment he climbed into a tank, gunned the diesel engine, and purposely crushed a car. The party ended at age 59, however, when Littlefield lost a decade-long battle with colon cancer.

So now the Rube Goldberg design of the Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge -- a tank with a bridge on top -- must go. The 15-ton bridge opens scissor style in three minutes, its 18.2 meter span able to carry a 66-ton load. According to the catalog, the bridge "can be picked up or lowered without the crew leaving the vehicle, very handy when operating in an environment with nuclear, biological or chemical contamination."

The collection reached Littlefield's hilltop home on very large trucks. "That was not without incident," Boller recalls. "Trucks had stripped out transmissions on the hill, so we had to take the tanks out and drive them up the streets. The neighbors have been extremely tolerant. But that doesn't mean that we haven't tested their patience."

What took a quarter-century to assemble will be dispersed in eight weeks. Then new collections will rise from the old. And the tank will be back.