Copake Auctions' "Other" Modes of Transportation Listings

Friday, February 20, 2015
Overcast with flurries and very,very cold

Copake Auctions "Other"

Modes of Transportation Listings

   Hello everyone. No, I haven't stooped blogging. I'm blogging less because I'm been busy with some other things. Also this winter, and especially the month of February, has been exceptionally cold. I was thinking that this could be a record month of continuous minus 10 degrees Celsius, and it just might be. There was even one day where I didn't even go to Tim Horton's (now owned by Burger King). I go there daily for my coffee and to meet several friends to chat.

   Of course, spring is coming "eventually, and with that more auctions and being able to stay outdoors for more than 10 minutes to walls our dog Buddy. Buddy doesn't seem to mind the cold, and when it stays,he's in "seventh heaven". As for writing today,and more to com,e  in the upcoming days and weeks, I am returning to one of my favourite auctioneers of antique bicycles (and other things) - Copake Auctions.

Please click here to visit this exceptional American auction company

   I can't remember how I came to discover this fabulous auction company, but I did. It was one of those "Eureka Moments", when you stop everything to savour the moment. Copake Auction Inc. at that moment in time had old toys, but their big attraction was exceptional rare and antique bicycles. I've written about Copake Auction Inc. sometimes exclusively about bicycles, and if you like bicycles and rare bicycles, this is one auctioneer you absolutely and positively must visit! Simply do a search on my blog for "Copake", and you will find the posts.

This first presentation is a marvellous children's pull toy wagon.

It's beautifully designed after the Art Deco style, and it's simplicity contrasted with its' lines makes for a wonderful collectible.

I like how Copake Auction adds reference items (The Coke Can) to illustrate the relative size of their items. In other cases, they might use a coin, or  a closely-cropped person (his side) as a reference to an item or toy.

Their photography is excellent of course, and these toys certainly "pop out off the page".

What'st interesting for today's post is that all of these toys are quite large. It's the first time where I decided to use M (meter) as the symbol) for the European length. Most of the time I use mm.

These are "bigger" toys!

I like wood and anything wooden will attract my attention.  Below is another simply-crafted toy,

but elegant in its design and the beautiful colour theme.

What attracted me to this toy is the rear wheels of the engine. The rear wheels are paired and I haven't seen that very often, if at all. THey remind me of those half-track dessert army trucks.

 There is not much information presented about today's toys. 

What's interesting about the Keystone label is the location of the company - 

Boston 24. Mass.  U.S.A

American "ZIP Codes" were introduced in the both century, but the 2 digit ones (24) were only introduced probably between 1930-1950. I'll have to check to be more specific about he time period.

I do remember here in Montreal, when Canada introduced area coded - but ours single digit. It was in the early 1960's when I still lived in Outremont, and the are code was: 

Outremont 8, Montreal, 

Quebec, Canada.

For those who don't know, The Keystone MFG. CO.  was also in the photographic business. I actually remember them when they advertises in the Sunday NYTimes newspaper, 

and of course in the photography magazines.

Here's another fine wooden toy that a child could probably ride on.

Again, it's the simplicity of the toy that attracted my attention. Of course, I did mention that I like wood. In the wood toys presented today, there are no knots in the wood, and the pieces are mostly one piece (no laminates or composites). When I visit Old Montreal (The 400-500 year old part of town), I am in awe of the simple 30 foot ceiling beams. And when I watch period British movies, I',m always looking at those old wooden floors with 30 foot single piece lengths of wood flooring!

Here's a new company that I discovered - the Rifton toy company of Rifton, New York, U.S.A.

I only found 1 other toy on Liveauctioneers that they manufactured. You'll have to visit there as this toy was noir from someone whose permission I have to use their photos.

I did some photo-editing on the photo below, bout I left the interesting flag in the back, and the blue stripe of the table cloth in the photo. I liked the red, white, and blue American theme here.

The Rifton toy is a ride toy of sorts, and the toop past can be removed. Whast I like are the industrial-quality castors underneath the toy. This toy was meant to be rode and was wall designed for even  older children who might weigh more.  

I do see some knots in this toy, but the main pieces are single wood piece and unknotted.

I also like how the original owner wrote "Jack and Jill" ion the underside of the toy. 

So that's it for this early morning (5:00 A.M.)  

It's going to be very cold and with blowing snow - again!

The good news is that March 22, (the Spring Equinox) is coming soon - 

a mere  30 days or 4 weeks and 2 days!

Thanks for visiting and as always

have a great part of the day or night

wherever you may be,

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com

Who Made This Nice Fire Truck?

Saturday February 14, 2015
Cloudy and very cold

Who Made This Nice Firetruck?

   I received a fine grouping of fire truck photos early in the week. Mr.Peter Zobnian had sent them to me, and asked if I could help identify them. I searched on the Internet, and on Liveauctioneers, but didn't find any trucks matching this one. I did find a tuck that had similar and different features to this one, and it was a Schieble, but still no luck in answering Peter's question. So to everyone who reads this post, could someone please help us out, and help with this nice truck's identity? 

   I sent Peter a link to a toy that was "somewhat" similar, but when I just looked at the link as I was writing this post, it certainly is very,very different. I selected this link because the side oval holes on the side of the truck were quite similar, however, most of the other features are different.

Please click here to visit a Schieble Toy that is vaguely is similar to Peter's

If anyone finds the identity to this toy, please e-mail me. My address is at the bottom of this post. I'll then e-mail Peter. What I'll also do is ask Peter if it would be alright to attach his e-mail to this post. In this way, I won't have to be the "go-between", even though I don't mind.

The truck is 24"  (610 mm) in length. Also, it's not a Schieble because it doesn't have a flywheel mechanism to make it move. The flywheel allowed toys to ascend steep elevations, hence these type of toys were called "hillclimbers".

I hope someone will be able to help Peter out, so if you have some time, please try and solve the identity of this toy. Also, if you find the link, send it to me, so I can add it top the post. Of course, if you haste a toy like this, send me the photos, and I'll add a post for you on this blog.

If you're living in the Northern Hemisphere, dress warmly. This February, up here in Montreal has been exceptionally cold, and for myself, I'm thinking maybe it could rank as one of the coldest Februarys on record. Of course, each year it always is the same - winter never wants to go away, and it's always cold.

If you're living in the southern hemisphere, you're having a nice summer and are warm, except Antarctica, where I absolutely have no desire to visit!

Thanks for visiting and as always
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey Bindman
toyserarcher@gmail.com

Railway Handcars

Saturday, February 7, 2015
Cloudy and cold

Railway Hand Cars

   I saw today's interesting grouping of railway handcars earlier in the week. when I was looking at toys on Liveauctioneers. I narrowed the search for several of the people who have helped me out, and I came up with Morphy Auctions.  Dan Morphy has been one of the earliest people and auctioneer who helped me out when I stopped buying and selling toys on ebay. The company has expanded over the recent years, and purchased an auction company in Las Vegas. As well, they now sell old and rare cars.

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

Most of these toys are probably from the 1930's-1940's. At the time, cartoons were an important feature in most newspapers, leading to their being designed into toys. I always wanted to try a handcar. I've never seen one up close, but I think they're quite heavy looking at photos. Now these would be great if you wanted a good outdoor exercise to keep fit. The original "real" handcar could be operated by one or two people, but I'm sure most of the time two people propelled it.

Since the original handcar was designed in a limited production, there were probably few companies that actually manufactured them.  Consequently, there were few differences among them. Eventually, someone figured that if you added an engine you could save people from having to work hard to get from point A to point B.

 With limited differences in the real handcar, the toys  are correspondingly quite similar to each other. Most have 2 characters, except for the "bunny" rabbit, and most are hand wound with a key.

What is very usual with any key wind-up toy is the fact that the key often gets lost. The good news though is that there are plenty of toy parts companies to be able to find a replacement key. 

Walt Disney was extremely;y popular in the 1930's and 1940's and created a lot of interesting characters. As a result, many of his characters were made into toys and dolls. 

Most everyone knows Micky Mouse, and Donald Duck. Below you can see Minnie Mouse, another Disney character.  It's interesting that in several of today's toys, there are slight difference sin the colour scheme. Below you have two versions - the green handcar and the orange one. T I always wonder why a toy manufacture would have the same toy, but change the colour scheme. It would have cost a bit more, and why have extra inventory and costs?

  Here we have the two most famous Walt Disney Characters -  Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

What just came to mind is which cartoon or fictional character was made into the most numerous amount of toys ever? Sometimes, I think that I think too much, especially being 66 years "young" and coming up with these questions!

Thanks for dropping by and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com

Look! Up in the Sky! - Part 2

Friday, February 6, 2015
Partly sunny, flurries, very, very cold!

Look!

Up in the Sky!

(Part II)

  The days are speeding along and are getting longer. However winter is staying - groundhog or not!

For those who don;' know, there's a silly annual event in North America where people take a groundhog out from it's hibernation and wake him (her) up. If the animal sees its shadow, there's 6 more weeks of winter, it not, winter will end early. Up here in Montreal, shadow or no shadow, it's winter.  And to me winter doesn't end on the Spring solstice, when the days (sunlight) start getting longer than the nights! Spring really starts here on June 21 or the 22, when the summer equinox starts. I really think that up here in Canada we really have 2 seasons - hot and cold. 

   Returning to toys (only 44 days until official spring), I had checked out Liveauctioneers and found a fantastic of airplane photos that are up for auction from the Lloyd Ralston Gallery. The toy airplanes are probably being sold in groups to save on time during the auction. When you have an auction of 400-500 lots, the auction can be a strain on some of the bidders, since you may have to wait for hours till the lot that you like comes to the bidding stage.

  The airplanes not the most expensive of American toy airplanes, but they certainly are worth collecting. I'm sure some purchasers will buy them and sell off the "extras". What caught my attention was how nice the toys look in groups, and that's what made me decide to post them in 2 instalments.

Please click here to visit this fine American auctioneer's website

I especial like this photo because of its photo composition. I call the term "disruption". IN the photo are 2 airplanes that are different from the rest, which makes the photo all the more interesting. It's a "milder" form of disruption to a composition. A more "shocking example would be a group of cats in a photo, and in the lower conner a mouse tail!

One of my favourite airplane toys - A Marx "Piggyback" Bi-Plane. When I first saw this photo, I wondered in NASA had borrowed the idea. NASA used to shuttle the "Space Shuttle" from California, when the real space shuttle had to land there- instead of Florida. Weather was the usual cause of the alternate landing area.

These airplanes were of course modelled after the American aircraft carrier versions that one saw in WWII - mostly in the Pacific. At the time America and its allies were fighting the Japanese on the Second Front.

I've never seen the Lincoln Swept Wing Plane (the white one).

For sure, I'll have to search for more of them! 

I even like these 2 simpler airplanes - especially because of their simple design.

What's nice to see is are toys that come to auction jun a "well-used" condition. This affords everyone a change to purchase them. ANd as far as replacement parts go, there's are several places in the USA to find parts - I definitely have to write a post  about Thomas Antique Toy Parts! 

That's it for today. I wrote minimally so you could appreciate the toys without interruption of the narrative. I remember when the first Boeing 747 (Jumbo) passed over my house in Ville Saint Laurent .It was huge, but being about 2 miles from the runway, it had slowed down. I thought it would fall from the sky, but of course it never did. It was huge, but elegant!

I'm sure everyone at any time in aviation history always was in awe of airplanes. I know when I went to Washington years ago, Heidi and I went to the Smithsonian and the Aviation Museum 

(they now have a newer museum).  I could have spent a month just in that one museum. Almost every famous airplane in America's history was there, and every tourist in the gargantuan museum was in awe at whatever they were looking at. Amazingly, we stayed until the closing, and within 10 minutes the entire museum was cleared out and was silent. We stayed (more I than Heidi) stayed, and were almost the last ones to leave. One day, we'll have to return to Washington.

 The Smithsonian Museum and it's exceptional grouping of museums 

is definitely the best I've ever seen-period!

Thanks for visiting and as always

have a great part of the day or night

'wherever you may be,

Stacey Bindman

'toysearcher@gmail.com

Look! Up In The Sky!

Thursday, February, 5, 2015
Cloudy and warmer

Look!

Up In The Sky!

   The new season of auctions will soon start again, so I've been perusing through Liveauctioneers, searching for auctioneers and their upcoming auctions. I came across today's post that way, and the Lloyd Ralston Gallery will be having their auction on  February 21, 2015.  For thosewell-know ho don't know, Lloyd Ralston started this fine auction company and was  well known in the auction community,. Sadly, he passed away quite young. Fortunately, his 2 sons continue the tradition, and his fine legacy.

  When I came across the airplane images that you see today, I know immediately that they would "jump off the screen" - a delineation of the old expression- "jump off the page". You don't see multiple toys presented as a single listing often. However sometimes, it's better to sell a grouping rather than one-by-one. Those who are interested will bid,and hopefully for the seller and auctioneer, the final gavel price will be amenable to all. When you have 400+ listings, time is important. The sellers want to finish in good time, and bidders do not want to wait 4-8 hours for a single item.- at least that's how I've felt at an auction.

Please click here to redirect to this fine American auction company

Most of the toys today and tomorrow's post toys span from 1930-1950 in time, and cross over from the cast iron era into the pressed steel era of toy making. When you see a group of one type of toy, the image is much more interesting, and you can appreciate the details of the toy model.

Initially, I wasn't going to add the listing below, because it had a blimp or dirigible ,which really is not an airplane. But I changed my mind. In photographic composition and image content, sometimes adding something "out-tocontext" makes the photo or in this case the 10 images all the more interesting. As you look at the beginning photos, all of a sudden, you are presented with a blimp! 

I also like the 2 accompanying monoplanes.

I just noticed as I was typing, that I erred - I foot to place a slash for the size 4 1/2".

When you see so many toys of the same  type, and that they are all America, you realize just how many toys were made in the "Golden Years" of the industry.  America searched for people to come to Her, and millions and millions of people from around the world took her up on Her offer. You just have to go to Wikipedia and search for the censuses of America from the 1880's - 1950's to realize just how big America grew in population.

With so many people, the American market was enough for most American manufacturers. 

Even today, trying to find American products in Canada can be almost impossible;e. There's just too much red tape to sell here in canada with a mere population of 33, 00,000 people scattered in the second largest country in the world in  land mass.

I was going to write more, and add more detail to the post, and then decided - nah!

Let everyone just look at the fine set of airplanes and relax.

I also was going to make this a post of 20 images,but that would have diluted the overall quality of the airplanes. So tomorrow, I'll add the second instalment of the collection. I purposely selected the word "instalment". It reminded me when I was a kid in elementary school. On sunday,we'd go to the school auditorium, and there would be serial movies of cowboys or space movies such as Buck Rogers.

The Wyandotte Mystery Planes above reminded me of Buck Rogers. The photo reminded me of those "alien invasions" that you'd see when those bad aliens were coming to destroy our planet! Fortunately, today is going to be cloudy, and I won't have to look up in the sky - to check !

Thanks for visiting, and as always

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com

The Tootsietoy Doodlebugs and Zephyrs

 Monday, February 2, 2015
Cloud with snow to follow, very, very, cold!

The Tootsietoy 

Doodlebugs and Zephyrs

  I'm not following my own plan for my blog lately. The plan is basically to have several posts prepared in advance with their respective screen captures and the photos and their respective descriptions already worked on. So what I'm doing is loping at my e-mails to see if anyone has written, and periodically going to Liveauctioneers and other places to see what might be of interest for tomorrow's post. It must be the long winter or what feels to be a long winter. 

   I did go to Liveauctioneers, and found some nice Tootsietoys that had been auctioned by the  Lloyd Ralston Gallery. However these Tootsietoys were "special". I'm sure I've presented them in my numerous posts about these exceptional American small die cast toys, but I never realized something. The Lincoln Zephyr  sand the Doodlebugs are 2 different toy models, even though they appeaser to me quite similar. So this is the post for today.

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

The Doodlebugs

These small toy cars were die cast and had rubber tires. They were originally presented at the Chicago World's Fair as "The Car of Tomorrow". The toy came in multiple colours and could be purchased separately. One option was to purchase  an trailer called the "Tootsietoy Roamer". The trailer could attach to the back of the car, and children could then play with two toys instead of one. 

The metal  grill is exceptional on this toy,and of course the entire car is beautiful. If you look at the last green car below, you can actually see the small hold at the back of the car, where the "Roamer" would attach.

The Lincoln Zephyrs

The major differences between the Tootsietoy Doodlebugs and Lincoln Zephjyrs are:

1. The Doodlebug has a separate grill that attached to the front of the car.

2. The Lincoln Zephyrs are windup toys. They came with a key and the toy could

 be wound up and later could roll along the sidewalk or indoor wood floors or linoleum.

3, The Lincoln Zephyr came in 2 versions. One had what appears to be a large rear light at the back of the car. The other version was called a wrecker and had a large-sized hook to be able to tow cars.

While I was researching this post, I decided to search for "Tootsietoy windup toys". Other than the Lincoln Zephyr, I only found one other windup toy - the #1018x Jumbo  Sedan Windup.  I 'll be loping for other Tootsietoy windups. I'm wondering if the wind-up mechanism would have added too much cost to the toy, or if the winding mechanism would have stressed the metal  over time, due to the added force of the wind-up. 

Dinky Toys have outlasted Tootsietoys. The Tooysietoy Company closed down long ago. However, these are my favourite small-sized toy. The Tootsietoys started almost at the very beginning of the both century; 1901, to be precise.  Instantly they made fine small die cast toys, and  4 decades later were making toys in the millions. You can always find them on the "usual websites of Liveauctioneers and ebay, and I'm sure you'd find them at any antiques fair or flea market.

I did find an actual listing by Lloyd Ralston Gallery of a toy that came with the key. 

I'll have to add this at another time.

Thanks for visiting and as always

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com