A New Catalogue Arrival

Sunday, September 7, 2014
 Sunny, windy, and cooler temperatures

A New Catalogue Arrival

   Last week, I ordered 2 CD toy catalogues on ebay. The one from Great Britain arrived quite fast, while the one from the U.S. is still on its voyage to my home. There are many entrepreneurs who scam or photograph  old catalogues and toy catalogues and either reprint them or place them on CD's. Copying of out-of-date catalogues from companies that are no longer in business is perfectly legal and acceptable. 

Please click here to contact me anytime

That's my "logo" above. 

I use it when I add watermarks to material that I have bought or have photographed.

The Nerlich & Co.Catalogue is from 1900-1901 for the  Fall and Christmas period. 

It was a company whose head office was in Germany, with a satellite office and warehouses in Toronto, Ontario Canada.

I cleaned up the original page that I had received. I thought you'd like to see how it would appear with photo-editing. Of course, to compliment the true antique catalogue, I left the aged yellow discolouration intact.

The merchandise is  mostly from the U.S.A., but some of the more complicated toys such as the steam engines and the toy cursers below are from great Britain, I think!

The chime toy in the lower right hand corner looks similar to a Gong Bell (U.S.A.) toy of that era.

I have a similar cast iron (USA) sulky & rider with horse as the one appearing bellow in the upper left corner. In terms of rarity and cost, the mechanical rowers and the hansome cab are usually more valuable.

What's interesting is that the description of the M65 Handsome Cab is misspelled.

It is called a Hansome Cab, without the letter "d".

What's interesting about toys, is that they give you a micro-second look into what "real" items were like at the time.  Motorized vehicles of all kinds are still being developed and improved. Fire engines are pulled by a team or team of horses. Water is pumped into a boiler that created pressure, and then is pushed out via the hoses.

Many toys of the time were actually small-sized versions of real items. There were small ice boxes,

small stoves, and even irons. These items were quite heavy, and I often wonder if they actually worked. They had all of the features of a "real" stove, and I've even added a post about them.

Below are banks. What is interesting is that the more expensive anymore interesting "mechanical banks" were not sold by the Nerlich Company. A "mechanical" bank" is one that has moving parts that are cocked through a spring. A coin is placed somewhere, and earn the "trigger" is released, there is a movement, whereby the coin is eventually deposited inside a "safe" place.

I think the steam engines below were from either Europe , from  Germany or Great Britain.

The large round wheels with the spokes had a small indentation around the circumference of the wheel. A rope could be attached from the wheel to a local mechanical toy with a movement, and the power from the steam engine would transfer to the accessory. I've written about these steam engines, and the accessories form such companies as Bing or Georges Carette are just magnificent, both from the appearance and their actual movements. In some cases small mechanical men would do all kinds of movements, and you have an entire "factory" of skilled workers doing all kinds of things.

Since electricity is still in its infancy, most homes were lit by gas and candles. Electric trains" would not be created until electricity was more available in a decade or two later. There were two typos of toy trains at the time. The cast orin versions (America),and the tin types  with some kind of winding mechanism (Europe and America). 

It's too bad that the catalogue was not in colour. However, the printing industry at the time was still in tones and in black ink. Colour would take much longer to develop all over North America. Europe already would have coloured lithographed toys. Many American or the rare Canadian toy (at the time) would be dipped in paint or hand-painted.

The toy scales once again represent miniature versions of the "real thing".

By the way, the hammers and the hatchets are not toys, and I hope I eased those of you who might have though tees were toys. The Nerlich & Co. was also a seller of "grown-up" merchandise. The toy pages that I presents wed are literally taken "out-of-context", hence my writing to inform you that the dangerous items were in fact not toys.

Of course with heavyweight cast iron trains, miniature stoves that I believe could work, iron for ironing clothing (also probably functional) and steam engines, parents would have enough on their hands to supervise their children without worrying about hammers and hatchets!

Thanks for dropping by to visit,

and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com