Paya Original and Contemporary Production

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Paya Original and Contemporary Production

 Almost year ago, I posted about the Paya toy company. It was a highly successful toy company located in Spain.  They produced a diverse and broad-ranged collection of wind-up tos that to this day are in high demand.  The company was started in 1905  and temporarily stopped during the Spanish Civil war, due to having been nationalized to produce war materials. Production restarted in 1940.  The company continued into later decades of the 20th century, eventually producing plastic toys. In the early 1990's and later on in that decade, there was a contemporary production was revitalized to produce a limited number or original toys from the earlier times.Production was limited to 5000. Different markings such as the production number of the item in the 500 series were printed on the toys to differentiate them from those nearly 60 years earlier.

   Almost 2 decades later, the  reissued contemporary toys are starting to increase in value. Unlike their earlier "relatives", these modern toys are collected rather than played with - too bad! Today, there are Chinese and Italian  companies producing smaller-sized reproductions of these once great toys. 

   I've added "Original Production" and "Contemporary Production" in the titles of the toy descriptions to differentiate the 1930-era toys from the early 1990 toys.

Please click here to visit Bertoia Auction's fine website

The fine toy above was sold at the Donald Kaufmann auction. It's in excellent shape albeit for the slightly-wobbled wheels, and minor rust to the hood (bonnet). It received a final bid of $ 10,350.00 plus auction fees at the time - September 9-10, 2010.

The hood ornament is of a famous comic character of the 1920's and later - "Felix the Cat".

The double-decker bus (above) is the contemporary  re-issue.  There are several difference between the 2 toys. There are no passengers in the newer model, the wheels are different, and it might be possible that the stairway colours are different. In the last case, I might be wrong, as it's very hard to get 100% accuracy of colour on the Net.

What definitely is most interesting is that the lithography on the bus sides is very close. I'm wondering if the original plates used to produce the lithography were still stored somewhere after all those years.

One of my favourite features of these great toys are the  spoked wheels that are seen in the last two toys. Most other manufacturers (in the original versions) produced solid "balloon" tires, but Paya, produced the spoked wheeled variety. I'm sure both the cost of production, as well as the time involved to assemble the toys took longer.But that's what somehow  adds to the mystique of a great toy company - that little bit of "extra"!

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com