Saturday, December 29, 2014
Overcast and warm
Canadians to the Rescue
Part I
Yesterday I received an e-mail from a reader asking if I might help him price a Canadian Lincoln toy.However, no photos were sent. It's important to send photos so someone can first identify the exact toy, and then of course, look at the condition. Estimating the price of a toy is not always easy and you can;t depend on an estimate to hold to that price. The condition of the toy, decals, does it work, does the toy have its original box and instructions,and so forth. Also, one time a toy might sell at an auctioneer for a high price, and in a month it might be lower,and the same could be true with the demand. Demand could be high 5 years ago, and them people might change their collecting habits,and switch. I asked the reader to send me some photos,and I would help him out.
As I mentioned, the toy was a Canadian Lincoln toy,and of course that gave me the idea to recheck ebay (no Liveauctioneers yesterday) and see what might be there. When you do a check for a every common name (excuse me President Lincoln), you will come up with everything but Canadian. So by adding the word "Canadian" or "Canada", I know I'll get more results for what I'm looking for and the occasional "Lincoln Logs" result. What was great though was the fact that I saw two sellers on ebay who had some nice toys, and so I wrote to them, and received their permissions. And as luck would have it, they're both Canadian. Interestingly, when I did the original search on ebay, there were listings from the United States and Great Britain, and of course Canada.
The first seller is Mr. Gary Nerman. He happens to own a nice bookstore but also sells toys. He's located in Winnipeg,Manitoba, one of the Prairie Provinces, where the hills are gently rolling and the prairies grow vast quantities of grains for the world. I checked Gary's bookstore for toy books, and came up with a good sized list.
As I was photo-editing the images (just placing them on a white background), I started to notice the details and quality of the Lincoln toys. Firstly, they remind me of the exaggerated Wyandotte (USA) wheel wells. You can spot a Wyandotte truck a mile away!
But what you start to notice about the Lincoln toys is the thickness of the pressed steel. It's very thick! What's also interesting is the fact that these toys were made in the 1950's, when many of the American companies were still making such toys, but in the blink of an eye, ugh, plastics would start to replace pressed steel. You have to give those Lincoln owners applause for staying with pressed steel!
What you ask start to notice are the bendable projections that will attach parts of the toys together.
They're huge! For sure, these parts are never going to come apart.
But what I like the most is the way the die was designed.The die is the hardened steel form that will be pressed into the sheets of steel to make the toy! Tons of pressure are used when the die is pressed into the steel to shape the toy.
Notice the nice side horizontal lines on the side wheel wells (fenders), and also notice the side step on the driver and passenger side. There are lots of bends and embossed detail for a toy. What AI also always think about with regard to pressed steel is how the toy designers or engineers had to think about where to make the cuts in the steel sheeting to allow for pressures of the bends and the form of the toy, without it roping apart. These lines allow for movement of the steel and are pressure releases. This had to be thought out,whereas today, I'm sure there is a software program that integrated design with strew factors for toy design or even "real cars and trucks"
Have a look at the tires on most of the toys presented today.
The trucks and cars are well worn and used, but the tires still are in great shape!
Gary takes lots of photos to present his items, and I took the two photos below and placed them together. This illustrates the way the cars could be loaded and unloaded on to the truck.
If you look at the roof of the truck cab, you can see the impressions that are the night lights
I like the slight impression made to simulate the hood.
I especially like the flaking on this toy. You can see the flaking in the second photo below.
These toys were meant to be played with hard, just like the weather we have up here!
What's interesting about his toy ambulance is theta there is a lot of design, and parts to it.
This would have required extra time for the assembly workers to work on the toy.
The back door of the ambulance is missing. However if you were to have a photo (there were a few 1950's catalogues sold on ebay), you could find several toy restorers that would be able to make you a replacement door.
Once again you can see those "super-sized" parts of the side of the truck that bend into the yellow body. For sure this toy will never fall apart.
There would have been a string or cord attached to the crank that would have been treaded through the rear grey wheel at the top of the boom. I was looking to see of those large wheels came off. I think these would have been used under the car to raise it off the ground, as the tow truck pulled the car. However, I couldn't see if the tires and wheels were removable.
I have to thank Gary Nerman, my Manitoba neighbour for helping me out. If you do a search on my blog for "Lincoln Toys" (no need to worry about anything but these coming up!), you will find 5-6 more posts. I never heard of Lincoln toys before I started blogging, and I decided with the first Lincoln post to try and present the entire line of Lincoln toys on my blog.
Things are going well, thanks to Gary, and my other Canadian friend for tomorrow's post.
Thanks for dropping by and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
