An Excellent Writer and Authority on Cast Iron Toys Contacts Me. Wow!

 Thursday, March 24, 2022

 Overcast and Raining with some snow

 6 C    42.8 F 

An Excellent writer and Authority

on Cast Iron Toys Contacts Me 

Wow!

        It's funny how certain lines from movies remain with you. The 1994 movie "Forrest Gump" starring a great cast with Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Sally Field, and Gary Sinise is one of those movies.

        The famous line at the beginning of the movie has Forrest (Tom Hanks) speaking to a lady sitting next to him at a bust stop and saying:

"My mom always said life is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you're gonna get"

      Of course most of you are probably wondering where I'm going with that line. The answer is that I received an e-mail from Mr. Rick Walston. He's a successful author of the book  Cast Iron Floor Trains, An Encyclopedia with Rarity & Price Guide.

        Rick wrote:

"Thank you for your research on Champion Toys. It is interesting that most of their toys were marked CHAMPIONwhen few other iron toys were marked by the manufacturer. 

Have you identified any Champion Toys not marked?

 I recently had a page from Champion's 1922 catalog brought to my attention that was shown what was offered in cast floor trains. The selection was limited to only three individual items, a loco, passenger car and a gondola they called a coal car. There were no tender to go with the loco and no sets.  These trains were not marked with Champion. Wish they had been.

In my book: CAST IRON FLOOR TRAINS, I had mis-attributed them to A.C. Williams.

    

    I asked for and received photos from Rick's fine book,  but the size of the photos needed to be larger. I will be writing more to this post later on, when Rick sends me larger photos.     In the meantime, is there anyone out there who can answer Rick's question about whether or not there were any Champion toys that were not marked "Champion"

To be continued.......

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

       

A Blast From The Past

Sunday, March 20, 2022                                                                                                         Cloudy with rain forecast                                                                                                      6 Celsius  42.8 F

"A Blast from the Past"

    I was checking my mail, when "A Blast from the Past" viewer wrote to me from a December 10, 2014 post. For those who don't know this old expression, it simply means that  someone from a long time ago reconnects with you, or a record that you haven't heard in a long time plays on the radio.

    Mr. Alvin Shier is a magazine writer who recently retired from  writing articles for Old Autos. He's also a collector of toys, and so he reconnected by also attaching 2 nice 1950's toys by the Canadian manufacturer (no longer in business) Lil Beaver.

The Lil Beaver toy company was in Canada and manufactured pressed steel toys in the 1940's-1950's. In was purchased by the Irwin toy company in the late 1950's, and eventually closed down.

That's it for today

Thanks for visiting,

And have a great day.

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com

                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                              

Were Champion Cast Iron Toys Always Stamped?

 Saturday, March 19, 2022                                                                                              Overcast and Raining                                                                                   3-9 Celsius 37.4 - 48.2 Fahrenheit                   

                       Was the Pressed Stamp Name Ever Omitted                         on Cast Iron Champion Toys ?

    Well! As luck would have it, Blogger is "acting up" again. If I enlarge my screen, all the letters become misaligned and move all over the window. So much for my having found a solution to the misbehavior of Blogger! 

    Coincidentally, another writer wrote me last week and asked a similar question to the previous blog post. Rick Walston's question asked specifically about Champion cast iron toys. I couldn't find any information about his question, but I did find something else. 

    Most of the Champion toys had raised lettering for their identification. However, when I went today to ebay, I did a search for "Champion toys" and found a Champion racer at a great ebay seller OpAmerica.  I've written innumerable times about OpAmerica, and I was fortunate to find something that I could continue from the previous post, albeit not quite 100%.

In the photo above, an arrow points to a hammered impression
of the words "Champion HDWD. Co.


So that's it for this post. I'll still be looking for more information as to
whether or not some companies ever manufactured their toys without
labelling, imprinting or embossing their name on or into them.

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

Was The Stamp on Metalcraft Toys Ever Omitted

March 19, 2022

3-9 Celcius 37.4 - 48.2 Fahrenheit

Overcast and Heavy Rain

Was the Pressed Stamp Name Ever Omitted

    Finally!  For the last 6 months, I've had a problem with Blogger (Google's blog division). When I typed and indented, everything got "messed up" in the preview and publish me. I had to spend several hours just to correct what I typed!   

        

    Well today, I had a "Eureka" moment"!   Somehow, about 6 months ago, I must have accidentally changed from Compose view to  <>HTML view and the mega-problem happened. When I  I pressed The pen icon with the words Compose view, my typing and formatting returned to normal! Phew!

    I haven't blogged much lately, but I've got back my zest for writing, and so I'm starting today with a question from Loren Bradford. Loren had an interesting question that I have never heard before.

Here's what Loren Wrote:

"Hello"

"I purchased the earliest version of a Metalcraft Coca Cola truck and all looks right but is not stamped with Metalcraft stamp on the bottom. The truck was bought from the Missouri area. 

Was the stamp ever omitted on these toys?

Thanks for your time in advance

Loren Bradford"

If you click on the address below, you will be redirected to a 

2014 post that I wrote about the MetalCraft company:

http://oldantiquetoys.blogspot.com/2014/11/revisiting-metalcraft-company.html

So, My question to everyone out there is this:

Can anyone please answer Loren's question about

whether or not the imprinted (punched/stamped) name

of MetalCraft was ever omitted on their toys?

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