Randystoyshop

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Randystoyshop

Background

 I've stopped by Randystoyshop on the Net, but never really checked it out. I think I was looking for toy repair people, and his site came up. I'm tempted to keep correcting Randy's store name, but that's the way it's spelled, so I'll just write about Randy and his store. 

    Yesterday, out of the clear blue, I decided to have a look on E-Bay. I've written that it's hard to find those rare toys, so I decided to go visit E-Bay. Was I wrong! I did a search and found several stores. One store didn't want their toys copied and written about, and Randy wrote back and said that was fine. 

    Randy is a diesel mechanic by profession, but he always liked to collect toys. Not just any toys, but those  toys that other collectors looked down on - those "misfit toys" as he calls them. Being a diesel mechanic, I'm sure he has the skills, and still does to repair things. As I even mentioned, Randy repairs toys.  He started collecting toys in the late 1970's and what began as a hobby of collecting turned into buying and selling. By 1987, he had to expand from working in his house to 

adapting an old "chicken coop" into a workshop.  In 1998, the business once again outgrew its space, and Randy decided to move to downtown Noblesville, Indiana. Randy mentioned that that's where many other antique  stores are.

www.randystoyshop.com

(please click on the above address to be redirected to Randy's store)

40° 2' 44" N / 86° 0' 31" W

The Toys

  I was going to show more toys, but I took some time to best show the ones below. I asked Randy if I could improve the images in Photoshop, and remove some rulers that he had for the Japanese Rickshaw and driver, and he said "sure". Once I started, I just had to bring out the fine detail and colours from the toys. And so, I only have 2 fine toys to show you for today.  

   With the Popeye toy below,  Randy e-mailed me to remind me that Popeye is not the 

"correct Popeye" for that tank toy.  The one he added is a "tumble or figure" that was installed. He's still looking for the correct one!  

   I was so interested with the toy, I didn't read what he had written in the description on E-Bay. That was almost like the time I went fishing off Vancouver, B.C. (Canada). My brother, his  wife, and my 2 nieces, and my wife charter a boat for an hour at $ 250.00. I catch the only salmon of the day - a large one, and the captain says "you can't keep it, it's too small!" I went back to look at the toy, but not knowing much about Linemar toys, I couldn't tell that that Popeye was the wrong one.

     The toy below is a superb 1920's  Lehmann (Germany) Masuyama wind-up tin toy. FOr being at least 92 years old, the toys and its original box sure are in great shape.

   You can see  the wind-up mechanism in the above photo. In the 1880's and later, Germany was "the" leader for well-crafted ind-up toys. I mentioned in another post that  Paya, a Spanish company that started  in 1902, by the 1930's rivalled Germany in  quality, craftsmanship, and design. Randy's last name, by the way is Iver, and he also sells on E-Bay. His name on E-Bay is Randystoyshop. He's a top rated seller, and has an excellent reputation on E-Bay. So you can either drop by E-Bay, or his store that  I've written above for you to be redirected.

Thanks for dropping by,

and, as always, have a great part of the day or night, 

wherever 

you may be.

Stacey

Paya Toys

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Paya Toys

      The Paya Company was founded in 1902 by Rafael Paya in Alicante Spain. In 1906, Mr. Paya's sons (Pascual,Emilio, and Vincente) helped their father build a factory to produce their fine toys. This was the first ever toy factory on Spain.  Their quality and bold colours helped them create a reputation that rivalled the famous German manufacturers of the time such as Marklin. However, the Paya creations were not as complicated or as big as the German Marklin.  The 1930's saw further expansion until the Spanish civil war occurred. Under the dictator Franco,the company had to stop making toys and produced shell casings. In 1946, the company started once again to make toys. I'm not sure what happend later, as it's hard to find information on the company. However, in the mid 1980's Paya under Lino Paya (Unsure if his last name was Paya)  reintroduced the manufacture of limited editions (5000) of their old classic tin toys.

http://www.toytent.com

(please press on the above address to be redirected to their fine website)

Liberty (Toy Company) - Wooden Ships

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Liberty (Toy  Company)

Wooden Ships

Introduction  

I was searching out some toys yesterday, when I came across a wooden boat with the title "Liberty" in it. The first thing that came to mind was the fleet of U.S. ships that President Roosevelt and the US Government ordered built to help Great Britain in WWII. The Germans were besieging  Great Britain with the Blitzkrieg and daily aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe.  Americans were in no mood to enter WWII, but decided to help Britain by sending armaments and food. The German U-boats prowled the  Atlantic and were even off the U.S. coats. THey torpedoes several ships off the U.S. coast killing many merchant marine sailors.

   Anyway, I had trouble finding other of these ships, so I decided to look for auctioneers on icollector and LiveAuctioneers. Sure enough, I struck gold with a past auction from James D. Bertoia. However, it took a lot longer to find anything about the Liberty toy company. I remembered that I had my trustworthy copy of Karen O'Brien's  12th Edition of "Collecting Toys - A Collector's Identification and Value Guide". I looked on page 4 for company histories,  and there was "Liberty Playthings" on page 511.

    Liberty Playthings turned out to be a company that existed from the late 1920's - early 1930's, and was located, in of all places - Niagara Falls (USA). Don't forget that we have a Niagara Falls (Canada)-eh! The company manufactured all of their toys from wood and metal, and always identified them by their name "Liberty".  There was a bit more information about the actual toys that they made, but that I'll show below. I tried to look some more on the Net, but drew a blank (nothing).

   What I did find and present to you today are very fine looking ships made often from mahogany. And of course,as usual,the toys were superbly photographed by the pro photographers at Bertoia Auctions. Fortunately, Bertoia had almost the whole fleet of ships up for auction on April 9, 2006. Thhe images can be found at LiveAuctioneers on their website.

The Toys

This particular ship reminds me of the ships that I see moving in Montreal when I bicycle along the St. Lawrence Seaway. I know someone who is a  retired electrical engineer who maintained electrical machines on boats, land oil wells, and of course, ocean oil platforms.

He told me an interesting story about the owner of Canada Steamship Lines - Mr. Paul Martin, Senior. Mr.Paul Martin Junior now is in charge of the company. He was Prime Minister for about 1 1/2 years after he won a minority election. The government was defeated on a vote, and he had to dissolve Parliament and call for an election.

Coming back to Mr. Paul Martin, Senior, a sailor on 1 of the Canada Steamship Line Ships  told the retired engineer, that he once saw Mr. Martin Senior on a ship and he sailed on it for the duration of the trip.  I guess he liked sailing on the larger "toys", but the story is interesting to hear about the owner of a worldwide shipping company taking a ride on one of his ships.

What I like about these ships (boats) is their simple but elegant design. 


If anyone out there ever finds any information on Liberty Playthings, 
would you please send me a note.


Thanks for dropping by, 
and
have a great part of the day or night, 
wherever you may be.

Stacey

A Reproduction of a Mechanical Bank

Monday, November 19, 2013

A Reproduction of A Mechanical Bank

     A few days ago, I was writing a post about mechanical banks. I was screen-capturing my images for the post,when I saw an bank that I have. However, mine is a "reproduction". I didn't bother to capture the "real ones", as I was busy with the post that I was about to write. A few days later, I had to track down those images. So the point of this story? Always go with your instinct, and do what you have to now, so you don;t waste time tomorrow!

    I know my mechanical bank is a "reproduction", since I bought it at one of the few remaining general stores/hardware stores in Montreal, by the name of Hogg Hardware. I know it was a reproduction, and they were selling it as such. I go to Hogg Hardware or Quinquillerie Hogg (French), when the super-sized giants don't have what I'm looking for! Those giants like Home Depot or Lowe's in the US, and Rona here in Montreal did a great job in knocking off all of the smaller stores! Those giants are also like our gas companies here in Canada- there is no competition!  The prices are always so close, it doesn't pay for me to run around the city looking to save 5%.

    Anyway, back to the story. My sense is that if a company closes down, then years later, it seems that anyone can reproduce their product without a care in the world. Maybe I'm wrong,so if you're reading this, especially if your a copyright or patent lawyer, I could use the confirmation or the correction!

   Today's mechanical bank reproduction is a "knockoff "(a polite word for "fake")of the renowned 1880's company by the name of J.E. Stevens. The original bank was  patented (May 31, 1892) by  Shepard Hardware (Buffalo, New York, USA). Later the bank was made by the  J & E Stevens Company. While I was researching this post, I came across a cornucopia of a site for mechanical banks. Bill Jones who is the webmaster and the writer for the site, as well as many other contributors. He has created an encyclopaedic source for anyone who has one of these fine banks, and wants to know something about it. 

                                                     http://www.mechanicalbanks.org
                            (Please press on the above address to be redirected to this great site!)
                    (

The red arrow is pointing to the threads of a screw on the underneath side.

On my "fake", this screw holds holds a spring that works the arm and cannon.

 On the "real" items, there is no rubber plug for holding the $$ in the bank,

and the spring is not seen.

On my "fake", you can see the poor casting for the cast iron bank.

The 4 corners of the "fort" have large gaps.

A top view of the "fort" to show you the large spaces where the 4 parts of the "fort" meet.

The arrows are pointing to the helmet visor and the hand.

Again, poor moulds  have resulted in the lact of fine detail. The visor on the authentic Stevens bank is longer, while the detail in the hand is much more refined!

My "reproduction"  release is shorter than the authentic Stevens bank

The red arrow is pointing to the # 3. On the authentic Stevens bank, there is no # 3.

All of the above images are of my "reproduction".

The ones below are from Net sources, and are "real"!

A photo or scan of an original advertisement of the "artillery bank" from the Shepard Hardware Company, in Buffalo (New York, USA).

Another of Bill Jones' photos.

I'll be adding more photos when I find out the credit sources.

However, Bill's well-taken photo shows many of the points to recognize is as "the real one":

1. The 4 fort corners meet smoothly without any gaps.

2.There is a small holein the third row of the fort bricks.

3. The hand has finer detail, and the visor of the cap is longer than my "reproduction"

4. The trigger latch (next to the word bank) is shorter on the real one.

5. There  are no screw threads showing through in front of the "fort"

6. The entire overall quality of the casting is more refined and smoother than on my "reproduction"

Of course, it's always great to have Bertoia auctions help me out when I write my blogs.

   It's always best to search for 2-5 different sources if you're looking to authenticate or disprove a "real" or a "reproduction". And it's even better if you can see the item in your hand.

So that's it for today.When I was out on Friday to do some shopping, they already were starting to sell Christmas trees. Is it just me, or is it everyone? I'm referring of course to how fast time goes when you get older.  I was just writing in the summertime,and now it's almost Christmas.

Thanks as always for dropping by,

and have a good morning, afternoon, or evening,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

es

Cap Guns

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Cap Guns

     Growing up in the last century (Boy that sounds "old"), in the 1950's certainly was a different time. There were gender toys such as dolls for girls and trucks for boys, but had my sister ever thought to borrow my toys, I wouldn't have thought twice about lending her them.

     Of course, the "kids" in our family, as I used to call us al had toys. Michael and Brenda, "the twins" and the youngest Jay (10 years younger than me) would always have toys. Jay was born in 1958, so he was too young yet!. I was 10, and Brenda and Michael were 7.

    I had a cap pistol that was given to me in the the 1950's. My pistol was a 6-shooter. It had 2-part bullets. The bottom was where you placed the single cap, and the top was the "bullet". You loaded caps into 6 bullets, and then the bullets into the gun.  It took probably 4 minutes to load the caps and bullets, and then 20 seconds to shoot the  gun off! I usually played with the gun on Saturdays and Sundays, as I went to school the rest of the week. Needless to say, that built up a certain eagerness during the week to play with the gun. So at 6:30 A.M. each Saturday from spring to fall , I would be shooting off my gun. Since we lived in a street with triplexes on both sides, there was naturally an echo. The funny part, if you could call it that, was that the neighbours never complained!

   Today's post presents the early cap pistols from the 1870's-1930's.  Most of these were single-fire toy guns where a cap was placed on a flat part, and the hammer part struck the cap. The guns of course, were mostly cast iron and smaller than the later die cast guns. By the 1930's there were die-cast guns, that opened up to accept rolls of caps. An advancing mechanism would allow the firing of a cap, and then the advancement of the next "unshod" cap. You could fire off 50shots in about 1 minute of you were fast enough! I did have one of these roll cap guns, a derringer, and of course the 6-shooter that I mentioned before.

   I was fortunate to be able to find a  nice collection of guns that were sold through James D. Julia Inc., so that's what I'm presenting below. Most toy guns that I've seen having been sold at auction don't fetch the high prices of cast iron trucks or cars. I haven;lt searched enough, so I'm sure there are some super rare and in high demand toy guns!

I'm sure these 1880's or later guns are rarer and fetch higher prices than 

their later and newer cousins!

 2 guns missing their grips . I would assume that the grips either 

had metal or wood covers for the handles.

The set of guns above held rolls of caps. These could hold a roll of 50 caps or more, and a gearing mechanism would advance the spent cap, and set up for a fresh unfired cap.

     One thing that I've noticed on E-Bay is the fact that any toy gun going up for auction has to have a stuffed plastic plug at the end of the barrel. I'd comment on that, but that's politics,and I guess, that would be for another different blog for another time. This blog keeps me busy enough!

I've finally managed to catch up on my posts, and actually be  ahead by 2 days. I'm writing this on Friday November 16, 2012 for Sunday November 18, 2012. Not that I'm "overworked", but it's great to be ahead of writing.

Thanks as always for dropping by,

and have a great part of Sunday or any other day,

wherever you may be.

Stacey