An Inquiry From Down Under (Australia)

Sunday, April 12, 2020
Cloudy with Sunny Periods
14 C   57 F

An Inquiry from Down Under

(Australia)

It's always exciting when you get an inquiry from a place you don't usually expect. And so it was with this inquiry - it was from Australia, or as they say there, "down under". The writer , who  happens to have a fine ebay store, also has an excellent reputation. He goes by the name of Australianmodelcars.

You can visit his excellent store on ebay by clicking here

    I would normally write about the superb merchandise that he has on his ebay store, but his question was one of the more interesting questions (and discovery) that I have not heard in a long time. He has a group of cars that were manufactured in Australia by the name of  Winna.

"Hi I Found your site browsing the Internet

Being a collector of Australian made toys for over 60 years I have been trying to find out if

the Australia Winna toys that made in the 1940s being almost identical to Tootsietoys.

Were they licensed or made by Tootsietoys with Winna  stamped on the base plate.

Or if they were copied by Winna. Also Bentoy did the same thing.

As Australia was so far away in the 1940s who knows what went on

Up to now not much is known’

I have examples of both Winna, Brentoys, and Tootsietoys.

Any information would be helpful in my research;

Keep safe in the current virus situation.

Thanks

"Australianmotorcars"

As you can see above, the red toy (Tootsietoy), and the 3 other toys (Winna) are quite similar.

The inside of the cars are marked with their respective identifications

of Tootsietoy and Winna.

Tootsietoys and Winna

Descriptions:

"he red toy  is a  Tootsietoy 1939 LaSalle sedan ( 83 mm / 3 1/4" long)

Solid rubber wheels, die cast , made in the USA, 1940's.

The other 3 toys were manufactured by Winna.

Closed sedan, made in 1940's,(83 mm / 3 1/4" long.

Die cast, made in Australia, 1940's.

With bakelite or plastic wheels.

Winna stamped under the inside of the roof, F.H.E. stamped under the bonnet (hood).

Came in various colours.

Type of packaging unknown, original price not known.

Place of manufacture not known, but possibly Melbourne, Victoria (Australia).

Manufacturer's name nt known; trading name not known.

Tootsie and Winna look to be the same casting with different wheels."

Below are 2 more different views of these very nice toys.

 

If anyone out there knows about the Australian toy brand Winna,

would you please write to me, so that I can forward the information to

Australianmotorcars.

As always, 

Thanks for dropping by.

Have a great time of the day or not

wherever you may be.

or as they say "down under in Australia"

G'day

And during these terrible times of the Corona Virus, please take care of yourself 

and your family.

All the best,

Stacey Bindman

blogwriter

You can always write to me at:

toysearcher@gmail.com

More Lesney Matchbox Toys

Friday, December 8, 2016
Sun with Cloud
-4 Celsius  21 Fahrenheit

More Lesney Toymasters

Please click here to visit this fine ebay merchant

Matchbox is a very small type of toy that literally fits into a matchbox, hence the toys are called Lesney Matchboxes.  The original company was started by 3 people, Leslie Charles Smith and Rodney Smith and Jack Odell (who subsequently left) started the company in 1953.The company name was devised from the partial first names of the two Smiths. Their first  best seller was the toy  model coach of Queen Elizabeth II, who made her coronation travels in  the original coach . This sold more than a million toys.

The impetus for the size of the toy was based on Jack Odell's daughter. Children in her school were only allowed to play with toys that would fit into a matchbox. Mr. Odell had one of those "Eureka moments", and got the idea to manufacture toys that would fit the size of a matchbox. The first toys were the Elizabethan coach, a dump truck, and a cement mixer. Subsequent toys were mostly  modelled after British Cars, with future models being American, and even included farm machinery, and busses.

By the end of the 1960's, major competitors, such as Mattel USA) started to compete with Lesney. Mattel's small toys were called "Hotwheels" and were quite popular. They weren't as realistic to scale or design to those of Lesney, but children all over the world wanted them. Eventually Lesney went into bankruptcy, were bought up by an other company, which also went bankrupt, and Mattel in 1997 came to own the Lesney brand of Matchbox.

Like all collectibles, the Matchbox toys are in strong demand, and sell for a fair amount of money on ebay and other toy-selling websites. Some of the Matchbox toys can demand up to $ 5000.00 USD or more!

*Please click here to read the whole story about Matchbox from Wikipedia

Already Prepped for the New Year

Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Sunny and very cold

Already Prepped for the New Year

   It's almost the end of 2014, and the Lloyd Ralston Gallery auction company are presenting their next listings for their January 15, 2015 auction. Do these 2 brothers ever take a vacation? 

I guess business is business, and everyone has to be prepared and working. When you go to Liveauctioneers, you can see auctions that will be happening for months ahead of the current date. Not all of the auctions will have their merchandise displayed,but the auctions are scheduled for the viewers to take note of.

  The Lloyd Ralston Gallery has lots of items for the upcoming auction,and I though that I'd "breeze" through the 517 items listed on both Liveauctioneers, and  the Lloyd Ralston Gallery website,but I only managed to stay on page 1 of the Gallery's website! There were many toys that I had not seen before.

Please click here to visit this fine American auctioneer

Not all the items in the auction are pre-1940 or antique (my area of writing). Nevertheless,there were some after 1940,anymore closely to the 1980's and after that interested me.I don't know the date of manufacture of the trio of Soligo toys below, but  I have to admire the person or collector who "customized" the trio. He (or she, changed them into "Woodies" - an American type of car that had wood panelling. The trio is excellent!

Tootisetoys are my favourite small-sized toys, although most people would prefer the Dinky toys.

I know I must have seen the top ca before, but it caught my eye. If you enlarge the photo below, you'll notice that "excess" metal was left in the original toy. I've seen these before, and collectors don't seem to have minded. I probably would have filed down the excess if I had purchased the toy in the 1930's, or would have returned it! 

Britains, the British company famous for their toy soldiers, also made non-soldier toys. 

I've never seen this toy before, and what I like about it is the fact that the outside blue part could be removed to expose the interior.

Nice!

This trio of "Woodies" is probably from the same collector who made the trio that I presented at the start - great job!

The convertible caught my eye.I'm sure I've seen it before, but I liked the colour combination of the convertible and the van.

WHen I bought and sold on ebay, I  purchased most of the Tootsietoy Grahams. The Grahams and the Tootsietoy LaSalles are always in demand. There are even several toy parts manufacturers, including Thomas who make parts for these fantastic small-sized toys.

What caught my eye though was the modern-made trailer by Mr. Armond Montandon.

I'll have to do more research to find out where I can contact him. There was also 1 other trailer and Tootsietoy combo in this auction.

Another nice pair of Tootsietoys.

Notice how the dark brown car has its roof painted tan.  The tan colour represented the Tootsietoy "convertible" toys. Any toy with that tan colour was a convertible!

What's nice about the Hubley die cast quintet is that you get to see the relative sizes of these toys all at once. They're larger than the Tootsietoys which measure about 4" (102 mm) in length. 

Here's a Kosuge that I never heard of until yesterday.

Matsuzo Kosuge was a Japanese toy maker who eventually formed the Marusan toy Company.

What I like about the Minics (Great Britain) is that the company  made wind-up toys that could move on their own. The green racer is probably a post-1940 toy,while the ambulance is a bi older. 

What you might have noticed is that most of the today's on today;s post are small-sized. The Lloyd Ralston Gallery does have larger toys,but you have to spook at the written descriptions to know their sizes. Overall, there is lots of diversity in this upcoming auction. If you look enough, I'm sure you'll find something that is a favourite of yours.

Thanks for dropping by and as always
have a great part of the day o right,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com

Lloyd Ralston's Upcoming Auction June 21 (2014) - Part II

Thursday, June 19, 2014
             Sunny and warm 

Lloyd Ralston's Upcoming Auction June 21 (2014) 

 Part II

   Yesterday (June 18, 2014), I posted Part I of a 2-part post about the upcoming auction at Lloyd Ralston (USA). The 2 sons of the late Lloyd Ralston now manage the fine auction house. They always have lots of interesting toys for sale, and I especially like the smaller toys. For the upcoming auction, there are many Tootsietoys, and lots of Dinky toys. Dinky manufactured toys first in Great Britain, then later also in France. The toys are still made, and there are lots and lots and lots of Dinky toys around today all over the world.

   What I like about old toys, and especially the Dinky toys is that they present to you an encapsulated version of how things were back in time. That's what I like about old toys in general. You get to remember things form your past, and you get to see things that you never saw before your time.

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

I've never seen this Dinky toy before. I like the brass-coloured (or is is brass) bell 

and the 6 firemen inside the truck. 

While I was sleeking toys for today, I noticed that Dinky did something similar to Tootsietoy.

They used the same truck model but added different decals to the chassis. As well, they, of course painted the truck in different colours. Tootsietoy didn't do this as much, and their  custom-labelled toys fetch high prices at auction. I once came across a famous Canadian department  store (The T.Eaton Company) on ebay.

 What I found interesting with this coupe was the fact that the bumper was made of tin.

Also, the description indicates that there is "1 die cast pop", which I don't know what that means. 

Once again, we see that the bumper is tin.

I like the red -tipped black pole to the side of the car. 

I think that was for people hailing the taxi to know whether the taxi was carrying passengers or was free to take on new passengers.

As you read the descriptions, you read that some of the Dinky toys have cracks.

I once received a poorly-packaged Tootsietoy that arrived in a 100 pieces!

It also had lots of cracks, which I later found out could be from impurities in the pouring of the molten alloy of metals into the mould. Over time, the metal composite reacts with air and become brittle.

 If you're about my age (65), you must have seen 1930's and 1940's war movies.

For sure, you would have seen a car like this in the movies being chased by the "bad guys"!

The green covering of this truck is made of metal, while the rest of the truck is die cast.

The front radiator and headlights appear die cast as well.

Here's a beautifully restored truck.

If you enlarge these photos in Blogger slide show mode, you'll see the detail that is elevated on the sides of the truck and on top. I like details, and you get to see how the original truck must have appeared all those years ago.

As you read the descriptions, you get to read  some descriptions things like the toy was repainted or was repaired. In past times, kids and people kept things and tried to fix or repaint them. Unlike today, we simply through the item out and buy a new one. Either the old one is too costly to repair, or there is a "new and improved" version available. 

I remember when my wife and I moved into our house. The house had a swimming pool and the previous owner left a fantastic vacuum head that attached to the suction hose. It broke, and I tried to get it repaired or replaced. I never did! We've purchased newer suction heads over the 20 years that we've lived in our house, but never did we get a replacement that matched that first one!

Of course, you're probably wondering if it's with bidding or buying a cracked or repaired item.

The answer varies, but in some case if the item is very rare, it still has great value. Also the decision rests with the individual. If I was a collector, I would be collecting for what I like, rather than what I could resell the toys for.

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always, 

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com

Page 5 of the 1933 Tootsietoys Catalogue

Tuesday, October 1, 2013
    The exceptional mild weather continues

Page 5 of the 

1933 Tootsietoys Catalogue

(Dowst Manufacturing Company) 

   It's getting to be that time when I have to start taking in all of the summer lawn furniture into the house. I keep telling my wife that we should buy a small 10' x 12' ( 3.048M x 3.657M) storage shed for the back year, and  I keep having to put the furniture into the storage area of our house! Some things (husbands and wives) never change!

   When I started to write about toys, I would buy and sell the,m on E-Bay. I purchased plenty of Tootsietoys because they were inexpensive, but still quite old. I like old design (real or toy), and the Tootsietoys afforeded me the pleasure of seeing them up close. These toys are quite small,hence the name. I'm not adding sizes today, but the average length is about 3 - 3 1/2"  (762mm x 889mm). If you look closely on the back page details, you'll see that a gross (144) of these toys such as the "Mack stake Trailer # 2801 weighed 36 pounds (16.36 KG).   So you can imagine just how many of these small toys were manufactured. In 1933, the US population was 125,578,763*. *http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm)

  These wonderful toys were  painted die cast  toys with mostly rubber tires.  On some models, such as the wrecking car # 0806, the metal radiator would be nickel plated.  In the case of the Delivery Motorcycle, the driver would be hand painted. 

Please click here to visit the fine website of the Lloyd Ralston Gallery

You'll notice that there are some variations in colour of the toys from their catalogue sketches. That was usually the case for toys of that era. Colour choices were offered for many of the toys. Of course, for collectors, the rarer the colour, the higher the value - go figure!

I'd rather just have the toy to play with I mean look at with (at 65!).

Thanks for visiting,

and hope that the weather where you are is as nice as here in Montreal. Of course, this weather is like old toys - ina while, they'll simply be a memory.

Have a nice day or night, 

whever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com