Do You Sell Antique Toy Tractors?

Sunday, February 2, 2014
(Cold and still snowing from yesterday)

Do You Sell Toy Tractors?

  Today's post about  old and antique tractors was supposed to be yesterdays' post before I wrote about the beautiful Keystone toy airplanes - a must see post, if you like toys. Today is tractors, and almost all are cast iron except for the last one  that I just had to present. 

  If you do a search on ebay, you will find that farm toys are very popular. If you look at a typical screen-capture like the one below, you'll see that farm toys are in fact # 3 on the list, although they;re in fact the 4th most popular buy number. Airplanes came in with 31,000+. Why ebay chose to place farm toys ahead of airplanes is beyond me. I'm assuming that they are in high demand, especially the very old ones. I would also theorize that way back 80-90 years,  and even longer ago,the population of the USA was much more rural (country versus city), and more people were in fact employed in farming then. Even today, everyone, including farmers, still collect them.

  I've mentioned before that cast iron toys have a certain "feeling" in your hand with their cold feeling and weight. You have to have one in your hand to understand what I'm trying to say, of course in a very positive manner. As far as cast iron toys go, they were made much more in the USA than anywhere else in the world t the time (1880's-1940's).

Please click here to visit the exceptional website of Bertoia Auctions

For myself, and I'm sure many other  people, there is a beauty and attraction of cast iron toys that is totally different from later-era toys. The manufacturers had to create a mould that would allow the molten iron to form well, as well as present he details of the toy. When cast iron was later replaced by pressed steel (USA) and later tin, more details could be presented with more moving parts. What I've always especially liked is the nickel-plated drivers on the farm tractors. I can remember when a nickel (a term for our 5 cent coin) was in fact made from nickel! Nickel was an expensive metal to use at the time, because it was rarer, and you had to electroplate a smoothed metal shape under it.  However, the metal did an exceptional job at shining the driver, and of course to prevent rust from forming, as you can see from many of today's examples that are shown today.

If you enlarge the image above, you'll notice that the driver's hands are like gloves or mitts and fit into the 2 levers of the tractor. This particular driver type is rarer than the others with regular-looking hands.

Here's another nickel-plated driver with those "gloved-shaped" looking hands!

The blue-red colour combination is certainly different for a tractor,and is very appealing to the eye.

I hadn't seen this  farm toy before. It's from the Wilkens toy company,that was later purchased by the Kingsbury toy company from New Hampshire (USA). It's simply beautiful. Also, its' quite old, since not all toys in the cast iron toy era (USA) were always made from cast iron. 

My surprise was the lower price that this particular toy was purchased for. I would assume that was because the toy was restored. If I had to have a farm toy in my collection of toys (not cast iron), this one would be it.  Bertoia Auction's excellent photography certainly presents this pair of toys in the best way. But for me, it's the beauty of the toys themselves. The wind-up mechanism with all of those repeating wheels, the yellow colour of the driver with the grey,black  and red colours is fantastic. As well, there are the wooden wheels. Then there is that simple but "elegant" cart with the silver-grey wheels, and the red and yellow curvature of the sides. And of course, the chained "tracks".

Thanks for visiting,

and as always, 

have a great part of the day or night

wherever you may be.

Stacey

Please feel free to write to me anytime at:

toysearcher@gmail.com

Before There Were Trucks (Wilkins)

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Before There Were Trucks

(*Wilkins)

    I had seen these cast iron toys for the last 2 years,but never wrote a post about them. I even bid and won a large cast iron fire wagon with 6 horses on E-Bay, only to have the item arrive broken, and never collected a penny on insurance.  At that time, I was "nice" on E-Bay, and didn't want to file a complaint against the seller for extremely bad packaging.

   Before I get to talk about these beautiful toys, I have to mention an important thing. Many cast iron toys out there today are "fakes" or "reproductions", and you have to be very careful to know what is real from what is "not real".  I'm not an authority, so I can;t really help you there. However, as the motto goes "buyer beware". 

   The  Wilkins Toy Company as I just found out, was acquired by the Kingsbury Toy Company in 1894.  Mr James S.Wilkins originally had made wringers (washing)  from his company - the  Triumph Wringer Company. At the showroom, Mr. Wilkins had these fabulous small models that kids were fascinated by.  Being an astute businessman he then decided to get into the toy business. Returning to the Kingsbury Toy Company,  they eventually closed the toy business, but they are still in business today. I had written to them because their toys are great and wanted to know if they were still in business (Keen, New Hampshire, USA). They are a successful tool and die maker.

   The Wilkins toys were made mostly from cast iron, steel, and tin. The bodies of the wagons, men or women, and horses, were made from cast iron, while the  wheels might be made of steel.  fenders over the wheels were made of tin, and they usually receive the brunt of any damage that might be found on them 100 years later.  

   For today, I've just focussed on the horse and wagon together with the horse and coach toys. The toys , I assume,  are pull toys, that would be attached with a piece of cord, to the front of the toy, and pulled along the dirt road, or wooden sidewalks.

   I'm a big romantic at heart and like to sometimes put the toys that I write about in perspective, although this is the first time that I am doing this. If you think of the 1890's and slightly later, the motorized truck would not come about until about 10 years later. Electricity had been discovered earlier, but would not come into some use and produce light until the early 1900's. Europe had been fighting wars for hundreds of years, and the American Civil war had ended some 30 years earlier. I remember reading about the last Civil War vets dying in the 1950's. Refrigeration would not enter into the market on a big scale until the later 1910's. Most American cities were small, and connected by dirt roads. As well,most cities relied on the railroad for transportation.

   So when you consider all of the above that I just mentioned, the horse and cart or wagon was the main mode of  transportation and delivery at the time these toys had been originally produced. Ice was cut from rivers and lakes and stored in giant warehouses. The ice would then  be transported by horse and cart door-by-door, by the "iceman".The milk was delivered by a door-to-door milkman. Meat had to be eaten relatively fast, and foods did not have labels on them to tell you when to dispose of them. 

   For  the people and generation who lived through the period from the mid 1850's through to the next century, that surely must have been a real experience. I'm sure though, the common person did not experience most of the inventions at the time. THey were too busy just surviving.Wages were low, there was no health care, or rights for people, especially the minorities in the U.S.

   However, much as I ponder what those people at those times must have felt and experienced, I realize that I like many of the baby boomers are experiencing just that in this century (late 1940's-2000's).  I have seen marvels and inventions and discoveries that people in the last century could never have imagined.. Yet with everything that happens, most of us, including myself are too busy, or don't take the time to "stop and smell the roses".  For myself, in a "distant" sort of way,  toys let's me stop and think for a brief moment. I'm sure that sounds kind of "corny" to some, but to me it's sort of romantic. 

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a nice part of the day,

wherever you may be.

Stacey