Ives, Blakeslee & Williams - Part III

Monday, October 10, 2016
Overcast and raining
17 Celsius / 62 Fahrenheit

Ives, Blakeslee, & Williams Catalogue

Part III

   I started out with 2 posts of toys, and when I was looking through the catalogue, I came across baseball equipment. I had never added a post about sports, so for today, this is the final post of the series.

What's of course most interesting is the equipment, which by today's standards is so antiquated, and rightly so. The next most interesting thing (if you haven't noticed before) are how inexpensive (by today's standards) are the costs of the equipment.

It's certainly interesting to see how many differently-priced baseballs that the company manufactured. Of course the "National League " baseball was the priciest at $ 1.00 which was a lot of money back in 1893.

Once again, we see the widespread pricing of the belts. Notice also, that the price is for a gross of belts, which is the equal to 144 belts.  I also just remembered that the company (Ives et al) was a whole seller.

Once again take a look at the prices for a gross. What's more fascinating though is the actual cost of a baseball bat. The most expensive bat per gross is the men's second growth ash bat, priced at $ 60.00 US. That works out to 41.6 cents (US dollars).  The lease expensive bas  is the  "youths'  Hard Wood , White and Blue Band", prices at $9.00 per gross or  3 cents per bat. However, this is a boy's bat and is made of "hard wood". What's also interesting is to see from how many different trees bats were made from. Three mentioned are bass, ash, and maple.

Finally we have the clothing.  The complete outfits (all inclusive) range from $ 5.00 - $ 12.00.

Of course not all parents could afford to equip their children with such 'luxury". Also, there were few laws for child labour in the USA in 1893. A good number of children had to go to work at young ages to help their parents out with the cost of living!

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

Have a great part of the day or night,

Wherever you may be.

Stacey Bindman

(toysearcher@gmail.com)

The 1893 Ives, Blakeslee & Williams Co. Catalogue - Early Trains

    Monday, October 13,2014
              Canadian Thanksgiving
Mixture of sun and cloudy, seasonally colder

The 1893 Ives, Blakeslee & Williams Catalogue-

Early Trains

  I recently purchased an 1893 reproduction of an 1893 Ives, Blakeslee, and Williams Co. catalogue that was reproduced by the Mechanical Bank Collectors of America, courtesy of one of its members- Mr. L.C.Hagarty. The Mechanical Bank Collectors of America isa long-established group that is dedicated to the fine antique collectible of vintage and antique mechanical banks. When they get together in a large group such as at a convention, one of their great ideas is to reproduce long-defunct toy catalogues.

The Ives, Blakeslee & Williams Company was once the premier and foremost toy train company in the United States. They had produced many other toys besides trains, but over the years until the early 1930's were the #1 train company. Eventually, they were overtaken by the Lionel Company,, and eventually closed down.

That's the logo that I use for my photos or scans

It's a trio of pairs of maple leaf seedlings

Pages from the 1893 Ives, Blakeslee, and Williams Company 

Catalogue Reproduction - Train

  There are several interesting things that you might want to know about the trains and the time period that they were produced:

1. The train locomotives are all wound by key.

2. The reasons for this is that electricity was not yet invented and was no yet available. 

Electricity would become available in the USA in about 25 years, and would be available across America  in about 50 years.

3. There were "rare" sets of battery-operated trains, but that was impractical.

4. What surprised me is the final prices at auction of these toys. 

They do yield good prices, but not exceptional prices.

If you go to the Liveauctioneers website, 

you will be able to find the final prices of these toys.