Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Cloudy with Sunny Periods
14 Celsius / 57 Fahrenheit
Strike
While the Iron is Hot!
When you find nice toys on a website store, especially any ebay store, you have to send a permission request right away. The reason for this is that, often, the deadline for the auction is near. When the action is finally over, you may not see the listing, and you can't access the photos or listing anymore. Several years ago, you could go to the seller's selling history and access sold toys for up to several months, but ebay has changed this. Now only 1 immediately-sold item is accessible.
That's the reason why I titled this post "strike while the iron is hot".
It's an old English expression meaning that you have to act immediately!
In His Own Words:
"Hi Stacey,
I'd be honored, thank you. I will check out your site. Two other tractor listings of mine ended on Sunday (let me know if you need item numbers) and three more coming on Thursday.
My name is Michael Hadshian.
Almost all Arcade toys are marked as such with their name cast into the iron. If there is no "Arcade" marking then I refer to books and eBay or Google to identify it. Let me know if you need anything else.
Send me a link once the blog is finished, thanks again!"
Of course, the honour was all mine. When I',m able to get permission from people,I'm always thankful and I appreciate the effort that the people make in helping me out.
When I visited ebay 2 days ago and did a search for "Arcade Tractors", I came across Mr. Michael Hadshian's listings. He had 6 beautiful tractors, of which 4 were arcade tractors. Of course, what immediately attracted me to his listings were the superb and excellent-quality photos. ebay changed their photo policy several years ago. Before, you could upload 1 free photo, and the rest would cost you. Now, everyone is entitled to 8 free photos. Some people simply put up 1 or 2 photos, while other may put up more. But to me, the Best of the best" stores put up 6-8 photos with excellent photography!
Above:
A collection of 6 1920's-1930's cast iron toy tractors
Above:
Vintage Circa 1930's Arcade # 274 Medium Size
Fordson Tractor with very nice patina
Length: 4 1/2" 114 mm
Vintage Circa 1930's Arcade Small Size
Fordson Tractor with very nice patina
Length: 3 1/2" 89 mm
Vintage Circa 1920's Arcade # 275 Medium Size
Fordson Tractor with nickel driver very nice patina
Length: 5 3/4" 146 mm
Vintage Circa 1920's Arcade
W &K Fordson Tractor with very nice patina
Missing steering wheel
Length: 4 1/5" 114 mm
Rare Vintage Circa 1920's A.C.Williams Tractor
Fordson Tractor with very nice patina
Length: 5" 127 mm
I hope that you noticed that the tractor above is not an Arcade, but is an A.C. Williams tractor.
I'm still having trouble differentiating between the Arcade and A.C.Williams tractors.
However, Michael told me:
"Almost all Arcade toys are marked as such with their name cast into the iron. If there is no "Arcade" marking then I refer to books and eBay or Google to identify it."
There are 2 factors that could help one know the difference between the Arcade and the A.C.Williams tractors. One is their different sizes, and the other is that the Arcade tractor has tracks on the wheels, while the A.C.Williams does not.
Michael will be having more tractors for sale in the weeks to come.
I'll try and remember to visit his listings, because he knows his tractors. I don't have catalogues from the 1920's-1930's (or reproductions) that illustrate cast iron tractors, so I defer to the experts like Michael to help me out.
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
