Old Toy Catalogs - Part I

Monday, December 3, 2012
Cloudy and Calm     4 C   40 F

Old Toy Catalogs

   I was wondering what to write about today, when I looked in my O'Brien's Book, and came up with the topic of old toy catalogs. If you've read my posts, you'll know that I like to think about many eclectic topics. One of the topics I've often thought about is what happens to a company when it closes down or is purchased by another company.

   I haven't done  much research, but 1 company that I've often though about is "The Bay". It's an American-owned former canadian company that traces its existence back to the Hudson's Bay Company.  This company dates back to 1670 when the British government , by royal charter incorporated the company. The company owned much of North America at the time (15%), and  a big part of its business was in furs and trade.  fast forward to the 2008, and the company was bought up by a private-equity American firm.

   I've always wondered what  happened to all of those old docuuments and maps. However, it's now good to know that the documents are stored in company's archives in Winnipeg Manitoba. I wonder if the American Private-equity firm could sell all of those documents off at auction, and make a lot of money. These are historic treasures,of course!

   I went to Live Auctioneer, and did a search for old toy catalogs, and of course was happy to see that both Bertoia Auctions and Morphy Auctions had had items that were sold in the past. AS usual, I like to give "exclusivity" to each auction house, so I've divided today's topic into 2 small posts, separate of course.

     Most of the auction photos were jut of the catalog covers, without hardly any inside pages. It would be nice for whomever owns these catalogs to scan them and then show them in 1 of those photo album sites such as Picasa or Flickr, but I digress.

    So please have a look at the next post of toy catalogs.

Thanks for vising and have a nice day

And if by chance you have a catalog of old toys, 

I'd be glad to post it here! 

Stacey