Toys of Times Past Latest Auction

Friday,  April 27, 2018
Sunny with clouds
10 C  50 F

Toys of Times Past

Latest Auction

Please click here to visit this fine auctioneer's latest auction

The recent trend in toy sellers has been to use large-sized auction companies to sell their toys.

Toys of Times Past has now decided to use Invaluable as their auctioneer to auction their toys. When you press the "please click" line, you will in fact be redirected to the auction on the Invaluable website.

I've selected only toys from a Japanese company by the name of ALPS. Like many toys companies in Japan, after WWII, the Alps company was founded in 1948. The company was founded by a man by the name of Mr. Kuramochi Shoten, who had been an employee of another company by the name of CK.The ALPS company produced mechanical tin plate toys such as toy cars, space toys, and moving wind-up animated/clockwork animals. These toys were very popular in North America. Later on, many of the ALPS company were designed as battery-operated toys. Eventually,

the company abandoned their toy business in the 1970's and chose to concentrate  on their other division of manufacture - consumer and industrial electronics.**

**Please click here to visit this interesting and informative website

Although I rarely write about toys from the 1940's and 1950's, time and years advance. I was born in 1948, and I'll soon be 70 years "young". Time does fly by faster than you think!

So that's it for today - short and sweet.

Thanks for dropping by,

and you ever have any questions, or would like to

be on my blog, please feel free to write me.

My name is (Mr.) Stacey Bindman

and I can always be reached at:

toysearcher@gmail.com

Emerald City Toys - Revisited

Monday, January, 4, 2016
Clear skies and very cold ( -18 degrees C or 32 degrees F)

Emerald City Toys-

Revisited

   It's been a long time since I've been posting regularly. I decided  today to search for past posts and contributors, and found Emerald City Toys. Early on, when I had decided not to buy and sell anymore, Emerald City Toys most graciously allowed me to use their fine toy photos. You can find them on the internet by clicking on the link below underneath their nice logo.

Please click here to visit this fine American toy store

The first toy is a tin lithographed Ubilda car. The original car came was a kit with all the parts, and would be assembled with the instructions on the box. It's in quite good condition, considering how old it is (65++ years). Also, the original box always adds a premium cost to the item. Collectors like to collect toys that come with the original box and of course the instructions. What makes this hard is the fact that most children and parents would throw away the box, but keep the toy.

Below is a fine French-made windup (clockwork) toy. ONe has to remember that the 1930's were a mere 2 decades ahead in time when the fist Model T's (Ford) rolled off the assembly line. By that time, car production had advanced by leaps and bounds.  With the car being a machine meant four travel and speed, the 1920's and the 1930's were considered the golden era of racing. Not only did cars become popular for racing on circuits and across the contents (Mostly Europe and Africa), but airplanes and boats also were "speed demons".

Thanks for dropping by to visit,
and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey Bindman
toysearcher@gmail.com

Some of Bing's 1920's Limousines

Monday, June 23, 2014
    Sunny and seasonally cooler

Some of Bing's 1920's Limousines

  I'd written about Bing toys in the past. One of my favourite Bing post was when I was able to match up actual catalogue drawings and written descriptions with the original toys. The Bing toy company (Germany) was one of the most successful toy companies in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. The company had a huge catalogue of toys, and made all kinds of toys. German engineering teamed up with excellent skilled workers helped in the success of the company.

   I decided to simply select 5 limousines of the 1920's and present them to you. Several of these toys came from the Bertoia Auction of the celebrated toy collector - the late Donald Kaufman. If you ever want to see superb toy collections, then you must venture over to the Bertoia website. Over a period of 3 sessions, the collection was sold, and garnered praise, as well as final auction bids.

Please click here to visit this fine website

I always an enraptured (amazed) by the fact that such old toys nearing the century mark could be kept for so long in such great shape. If only these toys could talk! I'm sure the stories that they could tell would be even more wonderful to listen to than the toys themselves.

I haven't been posting as much lately since I've been busy. My sister and brother-in-law came in from Toronto for a wedding here in Montreal.  I've also started to cycle again and teamed up with a fellow retired phys-ed teacher from Dawson College. He's in great shape,and we cycled about 50 kilometres this past Sunday - I'm still recovering! 

I also signed up with my city to use a lot of land 8' x 16'  ( 2.44 M x 4.88M) for growing vegetables.

It's a daily minor chore to check out the vegetables and water. It's also a learning experience. So far, my lettuce are having trouble. I think a groundhog decided to eat some of the long-leafed purple lettuce variety, and some of the other purple lettuce varieties are suffering from heat stroke. Everything else, including the green lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs are all doing fine. It's too bad the growing season up here is so short, but it's enjoying. 

I'll kep you informed as to how the garden is growing.

Thanks for dropping by

and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey 

toysearcher@gmail.com

JEP

Monday, March 25, 2013

JeP Cars

(France)

     The JeP toy company was originally founded in Paris, France in 1899, and became known as JeP in 1929, after having merged with 2 other toy companies. Their toys (cars, trucks,boats,and airplanes) were very ornate, and complex (e.g. open and close doors), and were modelled after the famous "real" cars of the time. These included of course the French cars such as Delage, Renault, and Talbot, as well as Rolls-Royce and Hispano Suiza. The company eventually closed in 1965, but the name lives on, having been purchased buy the company Jouet Montblanc.

****My guardian angel ,Mr. Philippe de Lespinay, a collector whom I recently wrote about has helped me several times. In this case, I need to redo all of the photos presented today to their proper ID. The name of the toy company is JeP and not JEP as I have written below on all  of the photos.

I'm going to go fir a 30 km (25 mile) bike ride, and correct this later today (May 2, 2013).

I've been having several symptoms that create dizziness (when walking) and  loss of detail and contrast visually. My white dog buddy disappears on a white sidewalk on a sunny day. So I've returned to cycling to try and strengthen my muscles and heart until some kind of specialist doctor can figure out the problem!

Press This Sentence to be Redirected

  As you can see, the details of the cars are quite interesting.  Nickel plating on some of the grills, finely-detailed lithography on the car body, and the drivers, and the cast-iron horn (klaxon in French). Of course, having Bertoia Auctions take excellent photographs allow us to see the toys well! 


Thanks as always for dropping by,
and have a great part of the day,
wherever you may be.
Stacey

Tippco Toys

Sunday, March 17, 2013
(St. Patrick's Day) 

Tippco Toys

(Germany)

    When you look at toys too often, they begin to look alike. I guess you could say that for alomost any topic such as cars, flowers, cloth sees, and so forth. However,  if you look close enough, you can see the differences among the manufacturers. 

    The Tippco Toys company was established in 1912 by Mr. Philipp Ullmann. The company  established itself as a major producer  of lithographed tin toys in Europe. However, in 1933 Mr. Ullmann, being Jewish was forced out of Germany during the rise of Naziism.  The company continued to produce toys without its Mr. Ullmann.

     The company produced interesting and complex toys such as its airplane bombers with working bomb doors. It also produced some of the first battery-operated cars with front headlights.  During  WWII, many toys were melted down for scrap to provide arms for the war effort, both in Europe and in North America.  As a result, many toys that were more expensive and rarer at the time, became even rarer and more expensive on the used-toy market.

     With the end of the war, Tippco made very detail-oriented tin toys of common civilian aircraft.

http://www.bertoiaauctions.com

(Please click on the address above to be redirected to the fine Website of Bertoia Auctions)

   You can see how these particular toys (Tin Lithographed - European) of the 1930's and later,  may look similar to most other European toys of that era. However, when you look more closely and even compare,they  are a much better than the others. Colour, design, design features (doors open, detailed human figures, bombs drop from airplane) all add up to separate this particular Tippco brand from the rest.

Well that's it for another Sunday.

Thanks for dropping by to visit.

Have a nice restful Sunday, and if you're here on any other day,

have a great part of the day, wherever you may be.

Stacey

The Older Clockwork Toys

Saturday, January 5, 2012

The Older Clockwork Toys

    I've been writing about the clockwork toys starting with Louis Marx and then Ferdinand Strauss, both from the USA However, as Europe was established long before the USA, it goes without saying, that toys would have been made there first.

    The term "clockwork toy" simply means a wind-up mechanism that gradually releases its energy to allow for a toy to move or create some kind of motion. What interesting is that once the mechanics were figured out in terms of the mechanism (gears and springs), it wasn't hard to modify different toys to do different motions.

    Most of the toys below were patented in the late 1880's-1890's to the early 1900's in Europe. What's also interesting is that for several toys fine lustrous fabrics were used to clothe the characters or models of the toys. Later, I assume both for cost savings and better development of the lithographic process, printed sheet metal or coated sheet metal with tin were used.

http://www.bertoiaauctions.com

(Please click on the above link to be redirected to Bertoia Auctions fine listings and great photography)

I'd like to mention that I go to Live Auctioneers  for convenience. However, the photos there are usually smaller. Periodically, for rarer toys, and having more time, I will go directly to the 

Bertoia Auctions site. There,the photographs are much larger and easier to view!

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/auctioneer/27-bertoia-auctions

(Please click on the above link to be redirected to Bertoia Auctions on the Live Auctioneers website)

     The beauty of the 2  toys above is just  phenomenal. You can see how the toys needed to be hand-made. The painting, the assembly of the toys, and the clothing all took time, and lots of time.

You can enlarge this image just like any other image. The reason that I mention that, is that this particular toy was especially made for "very important" clients of this particular toymaker.

The round metal disks to the right of the clown would be inserted into the bottom of the mechanics.

Different disks would allow the clown to actually "paint" different paintings! Now that is certainly unique! 

I've seen some toys that I assume would be hung from the ceiling. This might be one of these. You can see a brass ring at the top of the dirigible. The toy woukld be wound up, and as the large yellow propeller spun, a sailor in a parachute would drop down from the "sky".

I like the exquisite balance of the cat on small wheels counterbalanced by the umbrella.

Also,have a look at the small mice crawling on the back outer side of the umbrella - very whimsical!

Thanks for dropping by, 

and have a great morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you may be.

Stacey

 care.