The Race Course Mechanical Bank

Tuesday, September 23, 2014
  Unpredicted rain, turning to partly sunny
               and seasonally colder.

The Race Course Mechanical Bank

( J & E Stevens)

   I recently received several CD's loaded with several different toy catalogues from different companies of old toys.  Whenever I get such catalogues, I like to search for actual toys to match up to the illustrations in the catalogue.  Today's post is quite interesting, and you'll have to visit tomorrow's post to see why.

Clue: If you look very closely and carefully at the illustration page and then compare it to the actual toy, you maybe will actually discover the interesting part to tomorrow's post.  

   I'll try and find out the dimensions of this toy for tomorrow's post,but for today, I simply am presenting the actual catalogue photo from a company that sold and distributed these toys,and an actual toy. 

Please click here to visit this fine American toy auction company

Once upon a time, the late 19th century and fist quarter of the 20th century American hardware companies manufactured many other products aside form actual hardware.They made fine cast iron toys, and also made both regular banks and what are titled "mechanical banks". A mechanical bank is so named because it has moving parts that will move a coin from a part of the bank into a depository. A regular bank was one whereby a coin would be deposited into a slot. When this bank was filled up, a screwdriver would be used to open up the bank and remove the coins.

What's interesting about this particular bank are several things. First  of all, the bank has lots of parts and a more-complicated movement for moving the horses . Secondly, the mechanism of the bank works not with a lever for cocking the mechanical movements, but with a string. Thirdly, there is a  lot of movement to this toy because of the "race".

The actual mechanical movements are described in the description below on the image.

Because of the  mentioned differences of this bank to other mechanical banks, this one is more valuable and  the bidding always  attracts lots of people to elevate the final gavel hit on th stable to much higher-than-usual final pricing.

By the way ,have you figured out the "interesting" thing between the catalogue scan, and the 

photographs from Bertoia Auctions?

Thanks for dropping by to visit,

and as always,

have a great part of the day,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com