A Return Visit to the Antique Toy Collectors of America Inc. Website

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Clear skies 

-13° C / 8° F

A Return Visit to the

Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc.

First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a 

Merry Christmas and a Healthy and Happy New Year to come. 

To others who celebrate other holidays, I also wish you Health and Happiness, 

and a Happy New Year.

Please click on this sentence to redirect to the ATCA website

Over time, I've bought and sold old toy catalogues. Up here in Canada, there are 

not lots of toys or old brands of toys like in the USA. In earlier times with regard to old toys, we had Meccano from Great Britain. I had a set, but that was in the late 1950's. I base my comment on the fact, that when I started to blog, I searched high and low all over the Montreal, Province of Quebec (Canada)  and the surrounding area, and I never saw any American toys from pre-1940 and earlier.

I remember years ago, when I was doing my "usual" search, either

someone wrote to me, or I happened to "discover" the

Antique Toy Collectors of America  and their exceptional website.

I wrote to them for permission and 

they were kind enough to allow me to use their photos. 

The Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc. was established in 1965, and has expanded not just to have American members, but also had invited toy collectors from around the world to join and become members.

What's fantastic about ATCA inc. is that they have lots and lots of old toy catalogues available on their website. 

As you can see, this is but one catalogue that ATCA, Inc. has at their location in Washington, D.C.(USA),  United States of America

The Antique Toy Collectors are always looking for new members.

The Group offers members access to their toy catalogues, members receive 2 magazines during the year titled Toy Chest Magazine , 

and they offer other features as well.

Of course there are some requirements.

Please click here to see what the requirements are to join ATCA

So that's it for today.

To everyone, I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas

and a Healthy and Happy New Year. 

And for everyone who celebrates another holiday, 

best wishes to all, and also

a Healthy and Happy New Year.

An Exceptional Collector and his Website are Rediscovered

 Thursday, November 23, 2023

 Cloudy

 3.9 Celsius / 39 Fahrenheit

An Exceptional Collector

and his website are Rediscovered

    I recently contacted ATCA (Antique Toy Collectors of America) to ask for permission to write about their website and this great resource for toy collectors. Coincidentally, the person who replied to my inquiry was Mr. Derrick Clow. I received the permission, and posted recently on ATCA.  

    This week, I found an exceptional website, and it just happened to be written by Mr. Derrick Clow. What a coincidence. However, I didn't make the association, because lately, I've been very tired probably from the flu. I contacted Derrick, not remembering that he had had answered me 2 weeks before on behalf of ATCA. Nevertheless, I had a "Eureka moment", and recalled that I had just written to Derrick at ATCA, and now I was asking if I might write about his excellent website. I even checked my website, and sure enough, about 10 years ago, I had written a post about Derrick!  Needless to say, I was very embarrassed, and apologized to Derrick for my memory lapses.

  Derrick happens to specialize in collecting Keystone toys, catalogues, and even old invoices of a renowned American toy Company by the name of Keystone. Not only did Keystone once manufacture toys, but they also were known with regard to their having manufactured movie cameras and movie projectors.

Please click on the address below to visit Mr. derrick Clow's fine website

http://www.collectingkeystone.com/author/derrickclow/

        I've just presented a very small "introduction" to Derrick's exceptional website and resource for anyone collecting Keystone toys, or wanting to know about this once very popular company.

    I'll be returning to this great website, and will write another post some time soon. In the meantime, please have a look at Derrick's website. It has lots of information, and of course lots of photos of toys for anyone interested in learning about Keystone.

                                                       That's all for today.

                                                   Thanks for dropping by,

                                   And as always, have a great part of day or night,

                                                   Wherever you may be.

                                                   I can always be reached at

                                                     toysearcher@gmail.com

                                         (Mr.) Stacey Bindman

        

    

    

An Unknown Cap Pistol

 Saturday February 4, 2023
 -24° C / -11.2 F
 Sunny

                    

A Rare and Old Unknown  Cap Pistol

  It's -24° C or -11.2° F, on a very cold day. 

When I awoke today, it was -30° C or -22° F.  

What a great day to be indoors and write a few blog posts! 

 

This week, I received an e-mail  from a reader. 

He sent me a well-photographed photo of what most-likely is an early 20th century American cast iron toy cap pistol.

    I thought it might be easy to find information about this most-interesting toy pistol, but it hasn't been easy. I've spent a long times searching for this toy, and I was certain that I would find information and identification about it. But I haven't!

    Toy cap guns were very popular in the late 19th century and 20th century, and there are hundreds and hundreds. of different cap guns that were made during those times!

The first place on the Internet was ATCA, The Antique Toy Collectors of America.

ATCA is an exceptional website for doing research. Their exceptional collection of old toy catalogues is a great asset when searching out information on toys. I selected several American toy catalogues whom I knew had manufactured toy guns.

I then did a search on Pinterest

 Nothing was to be found!

Finally I chose Google.

However after looking at pages and pages of "antique toy cap guns", "antique cast iron cap guns", antique American cap guns", and so on,

I was out-gunned!

So, my dedicated readers; thanks for visiting me once again.

And if there is anyone out there who can identify this very rare

toy cap gun, would you be so kind as to 

write to me.

From there, I will write to and send him the good news!

As always,

Thanks for dropping by,

And have a great day,

wherever you may be.

 (Mr.) Stacey Bindman

My e-mail address is

toysearcher@gmail.com

 

Teamwork in Identifying Althoff Bergmann Toys

Thursday, February 2, 2018
Overcast and Snowing
-2 C  28.4 F

Teamwork in

Identifying Some Nice 

Althof Bergmann 

& Company Toys

Please click here to visit this renowned American toy auctioneer

The Althof Bergmann & Company was established in 1867 by three miner-brothers.They

imported porcelain and toys, such as horse-drawn vehicles, railways, and boats. The toys were made of iron and tin, and were quite similar to the pull toys of the times. 

A great resource for identifying certain types of old toys happens to be the Antique Toy Collectors of America or ATCA. On their fine website, they have a section, whereby one can visit their collection of old toy catalogues, and one of them happens to be  a reproduction Althoff Bergmann catalogue from 1874.  What I did was  use the scanned pages from ATCA two cross-reference (*match up) the toys from Bertoia Auctions to the catalogue.

Courtesy of The Antique Toy Collectors of America

Courtesy of The Antique Toy Collectors of America

Courtesy of The Antique Toy Collectors of America

Here's a fine "large dog on wheels" pull tin toy on cast iron wheels. It's an Althoff Bergmann,

 but it's probably made a bit later, and the catalogue doesnt' have the dog

without the small basket.

Here's another match-up of the upper image of the steam fire engine with horses.

Here again, we have a modified toy called the "Fulton. Bertoia Auctions identified this toy 

as an Althoff Bergmann. Nevertheless, you would have been able to 

identify this fine toy through the ATCA catalogue.

The bend in the that you see above helps you to know

that the irregular shape of the rod holding the 2 wheels has an attachment

that would allow the upper triangular part of the steamship to move up and down.

Of course, it helps when you have excellent photos such as these from Bertoia Auctions to 

help you identify the Althoff-Bergmann toy.

Thanks for dropping by,

And have a great day.

Stacey Bindman

Toysearcher@gmail.com

The Antique Toy Collectors of America Inc.

Thursday, November 2, 2017
Overcast
8 C  46 F

The Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc. 

Please click here to visit this fabulous resource for toy collectors

 I've written about  The Antique Toy Collectors of America Inc.  (ATCA) before, but never a post.  So when I revisited them, I was amazed to discover that they had a new addition to their website that I hadn't seen before my last visit.  The new addition or section was titled ATCA Toy Catalogs, at the top of the page (please see where the arrow is pointing below).

The mission statement of  ATCA is shown below.

To join ATCA, you must have certain conditions (criteria) which can be found below:

Please click here to see the requirements to join ATCA

Below is a list of what ATCA is all about, and the advantages for joining ATCA.

You can decide for yourself if this fine resource is for you.

Below is a sample of some of the 57 catalogues that they have on their website. ATCA also is always updating their catalogues as they find them.

Below are some sample book covers and their respective pages

The Gong Bell Company was famous for their toys with bells. 

The Kenton Hardware catalogue is the early one

You can tell it's early from the type of fire "wagons" and horses that are teamed together.

The A. Schoenhut Catalogue from 1905 has a sample page that illustrates samples of circus toys
together with their ladders. I would assume that these toys are hard to find complete with their respective parts.

This Hubley catalogue is from about the late 1930's-early 1940's .
The sample page is of their famous motorcycles. Hubley and many
other manufacturers made lots of these cast-iron toys.

This is a pre-war (WWII) catalogue of the Tippco Company from Germany.

They are famous for their fine airplanes, including three that has lights, operated by a battery.

On the ATCA website, the catalogues are shown in their entirety.
What is great about the ATCA website is being able to check to see who 
might have manufactured them I'm not a member of ATCA, but for some people, this is an
interesting organization that you might consider joining. By being a member, you can write to the organization to help you identify a particular toy, and that's a big help.