A Rare Marklin Ship Comes to Auction

Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Cloudy with Sun
26 Celsius / 79 Fahrenheit

A Very Rare Marklin Ship Comes to Auction

    If you've never been to the Bertoia Auctions website, you should venture over there. Bertoia Auction is one of the premium and best toy auction companies in the USA. It's family-owned, and they always have great auctions. Sometimes an entire collection form one collector will go to Bertoia's facilities for exclusive auction.

Please click here to visit this particular auction (May 20-21, 2016)

   The auction had plenty of fine old and antique toys. Sometimes I'll search for toys by price, with the highest price beginning, and descending to lesser values after. I happened to catch this fantastic 

early 1900's Marklin Oceanliner in "pristine condition". You might want to check the final auction bid for this particular.  For something so rare, and in such condition, it truly garnered a very high final price.

Description

MARKLIN OCEANLINER "AMERIKA"
Germany, circa early 1900's, as found, an all original museum quality example that represents the finest of its kind ever offered at public auction. This four funnel, clockwork powered toy vessel, is a startling visual of world's finest in craftsmanship, scale and overall detail. Dry docked and ready for a new port of call, its lifeboats, masts, upper deck appointments, extraordinary color coordinating paint scheme and sea worthy hull proudly await this May's auction. 38" Overall length. One lifeboat repainted, overall (Pristine Condition)

As you can plainly see, for such a rare toy, Bertoia's photographer took plenty of photographs.

These toys, in this case an Oceanliner, were actually played with in small lakes in parks.

The toy is a windup with clockwork mechanism.  I assume that if the boat did not come back to shore, then perhaps a park attendant would go into the lake and retrieve the toy.

I decided not to write too much because the photographs speak volumes for such a unique toy.

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)

The First Flight

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The First Flight

   Today's topic wasn't going to be my first choice, but when I came across a very old  airplane toy, that was the topic I decided upon. Probably one of the most recognized photos is the one below that I used from Wikepedia. That's the first motorized flight by the Wright brothers.

    That first flight took place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (USA) on December 17, 1903. When you think of that time, you'd have to realize that it probably took at least 1-7 days for the whole world to hear the news. Marconi had transmitted the first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean on December 12, 1901. Newspapers took a long time to be distributed across countries, and as such days would pass before people in the centres of their countries would read the news.

   I can't even imagine the exuberance and fascination when this first flight occurred. I remember when  we moved in 1963 from an older part of town. The airplane pathway landings p[assed over our houses, and there were still large-sized propeller airplanes flying. Flash-forward, years, later when I first saw the first Boing 747 passing by. It wan huge, and was flying what seemed to be so slowly, I thought it would drop out of the sky!

Terminology

Biplane:    A twin wing airplane. The early airplanes had 1 wing atop the other

Pusher:     A type of airplane engine where the engine is in front and the propeller is in back.

                  Normal propeller-type airplanes have the propeller in front, and the engine in the back.

Please click on this sentence to be redirected

     If you're wondering  about the  focus of some of the images, don't worry. I was removing the backgrounds from the images, when I decided to use Photoshop  (Layer >>Layer Style >>Inner Glow). I liked the effect for the airplanes, and decided to present them to you that way.

    Most of the toys do not have identifying dates for them, but I have a feeling that many of the toys were in fact made in the early 1910's, thus making them "true antiques" - being that is, at least 100 years old.

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always, have a great part of the day

wherever you may be.

Stacey