So That's Where My Photos Are!

Tuesday, March  27, 2018
Sunny with Clouds
+7 C 44.6 F

So That's Where 

My Photos Are!

Write to me anytime at this e-mail address

I was taken aback (surprised), when I noticed a notification on my blog-writing page.

I clicked the icon for messages, and suddenly my photos "magically" appeared.

However, upon close examination, I'm still missing 1000's of photos, 

and there are hardly any photos from 2018. This isn't the first time I've had missing photos. I've had this same problem since 2014.  Of course, I always made sure that I save my photos anyway on my external hard drives ( I have 2 of them).

I thought that I'd simply present you some of my early blog post photos. I currently have 1400 blog posts. What I would suggest is that you visit my early posts.  I started my blog in 2011. At that time, I bought and sold toys, and just broke even after the costs of shipping to my house, repackaging, and sending the toys to new buyers. At that time, my most expensive toys 

cost me about  $ 50.00 US. 

The best toys that I purchased in the past were the Tootsietoy Grahams. I don;t have them anymore, but I was able to  purchase them for about $ 15.00 - $ 20.00 US dollars at the time, and now, in 2018, some of these fine toys can cost from $ 45.00 - $ 250.00 U.S dollars.

That's the web address where my photos are

When I clicked on the above link,

I was redirected to this new page.

Below are my latest photos. The amount of photos is very low, and I'm missing

hundreds and hundreds of photos!

I'm a retired professional photographer and professional photography teacher. I spent lots of time to take excellent photos (please excuse my boasting). However,when you sell toys on ebay, the quality doesn't really matter. However, I also photographed well, in order to have nice photos for my blog.  I've even had American Pickers pay me for several of my  photos.

The photo of the Turret cigarettes advertisement  on the wall was used for another of my blogs

about professional photography. I took the photo because it was interesting, and I knew that when that building was rebuilt, the wall would again be hidden!. I think Turret cigarettes were sold in the 1930's, here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

I used to use white fabric and textured cloth (burlap) as foundations and backgrounds for my toys.

Since I stopped taking my own toy photos, I decided to remove all backgrounds and foundations, in order to place toys of my guest on white. I find the toys  present best on a white background!

Below is set of flower photos, that are again on my Pro Photo blog.

The sulkies (horse, rider, and cart) were purchased because my father-in-law had some sulky racehorses.  I still have that grey horse with the rider.

Below is an eclectic  (interestingly varied) group of photos. 

There are Hubley cast iron cars and trucks, and diecast Tootsietoys. What I just noticed is that if I had to redo these photos, I would add the American penny in all the photos. As these photos are presented, one cannot know the small  Tootsietoys from the larger Hubley toys.

The top red car  in the second row (in silhouette) appears in 2 other places. The toy

was in bad condition, and so I decided to repaint it. 

The result is in the first row, second image down.

So if you ever decide to write a blog with photos, 

always be sure to back-up the photos on your personal hard drives. 

It's better, and you know where the photos are.

With  Google, it seems that I always seem to have "issues" with missing photos.

And finally, if you're reading this post, go back in time to when I first started posting.

There are some nice posts that I started from which I bought my own toys and resold them. You might find those posts also interesting.

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 New Catalogue Arrival

Sunday, September 7, 2014
 Sunny, windy, and cooler temperatures

A New Catalogue Arrival

   Last week, I ordered 2 CD toy catalogues on ebay. The one from Great Britain arrived quite fast, while the one from the U.S. is still on its voyage to my home. There are many entrepreneurs who scam or photograph  old catalogues and toy catalogues and either reprint them or place them on CD's. Copying of out-of-date catalogues from companies that are no longer in business is perfectly legal and acceptable. 

Please click here to contact me anytime

That's my "logo" above. 

I use it when I add watermarks to material that I have bought or have photographed.

The Nerlich & Co.Catalogue is from 1900-1901 for the  Fall and Christmas period. 

It was a company whose head office was in Germany, with a satellite office and warehouses in Toronto, Ontario Canada.

I cleaned up the original page that I had received. I thought you'd like to see how it would appear with photo-editing. Of course, to compliment the true antique catalogue, I left the aged yellow discolouration intact.

The merchandise is  mostly from the U.S.A., but some of the more complicated toys such as the steam engines and the toy cursers below are from great Britain, I think!

The chime toy in the lower right hand corner looks similar to a Gong Bell (U.S.A.) toy of that era.

I have a similar cast iron (USA) sulky & rider with horse as the one appearing bellow in the upper left corner. In terms of rarity and cost, the mechanical rowers and the hansome cab are usually more valuable.

What's interesting is that the description of the M65 Handsome Cab is misspelled.

It is called a Hansome Cab, without the letter "d".

What's interesting about toys, is that they give you a micro-second look into what "real" items were like at the time.  Motorized vehicles of all kinds are still being developed and improved. Fire engines are pulled by a team or team of horses. Water is pumped into a boiler that created pressure, and then is pushed out via the hoses.

Many toys of the time were actually small-sized versions of real items. There were small ice boxes,

small stoves, and even irons. These items were quite heavy, and I often wonder if they actually worked. They had all of the features of a "real" stove, and I've even added a post about them.

Below are banks. What is interesting is that the more expensive anymore interesting "mechanical banks" were not sold by the Nerlich Company. A "mechanical" bank" is one that has moving parts that are cocked through a spring. A coin is placed somewhere, and earn the "trigger" is released, there is a movement, whereby the coin is eventually deposited inside a "safe" place.

I think the steam engines below were from either Europe , from  Germany or Great Britain.

The large round wheels with the spokes had a small indentation around the circumference of the wheel. A rope could be attached from the wheel to a local mechanical toy with a movement, and the power from the steam engine would transfer to the accessory. I've written about these steam engines, and the accessories form such companies as Bing or Georges Carette are just magnificent, both from the appearance and their actual movements. In some cases small mechanical men would do all kinds of movements, and you have an entire "factory" of skilled workers doing all kinds of things.

Since electricity is still in its infancy, most homes were lit by gas and candles. Electric trains" would not be created until electricity was more available in a decade or two later. There were two typos of toy trains at the time. The cast orin versions (America),and the tin types  with some kind of winding mechanism (Europe and America). 

It's too bad that the catalogue was not in colour. However, the printing industry at the time was still in tones and in black ink. Colour would take much longer to develop all over North America. Europe already would have coloured lithographed toys. Many American or the rare Canadian toy (at the time) would be dipped in paint or hand-painted.

The toy scales once again represent miniature versions of the "real thing".

By the way, the hammers and the hatchets are not toys, and I hope I eased those of you who might have though tees were toys. The Nerlich & Co. was also a seller of "grown-up" merchandise. The toy pages that I presents wed are literally taken "out-of-context", hence my writing to inform you that the dangerous items were in fact not toys.

Of course with heavyweight cast iron trains, miniature stoves that I believe could work, iron for ironing clothing (also probably functional) and steam engines, parents would have enough on their hands to supervise their children without worrying about hammers and hatchets!

Thanks for dropping by to visit,

and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com

A Thank You to All Readers

Monday, August 25, 2014
              Sunny and very hot

A Thank Toy to

All My Readers

   For those who don't know who I am, my name is (Mr.) Stacey Bindman. I'm a retired professional photography teacher and still am a professional photographer. I am happily married to my wonderful and most understanding wide Heidi, and we have a great dog by the name of Buddy, who is great to have as a friend and companion. I live in Montreal,Quebec, Canada and have been writing this blog for about 3 1/2 years.

I've been watching my stats or page views lately because I know that I was going to hit the 200,000 milestone soon. Unfortunately, it's not 100% accurate because either Google doesn't put enough effort into blocking this nuisance, or it cannot do anything about what is called "referrer spam". Referrer Spam is false page views that companies or individuals place on your page view  data so that you will "visit" their pages. You should never do this because some of this might be viruses!. So about  4-8% must be removed or discounted from accurate counting. 

A Screen Capture of my Stats @ 4:00 P.M. EST (North America)

A Blogger (Google) Map of the World

I filled in most of the countries, as Google only present countries that have large amounts of viewers.

This is discouraging to myself, and I'm sure other bloggers, because you don't get to see every country and their readers.

At all times, Google presents the blogger with such a map. Sadly, Google does not present a total and accurate map of everyone who has visited me. I learned this by accident one day,  when I looked at my stats and saw a "rare" country that I though would never visit my blog. After that, I started to daily and randomly check this world map, and found that a lot of people from a lot of countries did I'm fact visit my blog, even though Google didn't bother to show this. So now, each day, I check. I would like to fill up the entire map in green, but I know that many countries and many people simply do not have electricity, let alone the Internet and computers!

So to everyone today and for the future when you visit, I would like to say a big 

Thank You

for having discovered my blog and for taking the time to read what I write. 

I would also like to thank the readers who have also asked me questions, helped correct my mistakes,or who have toys that needed either my help or those of my readers.

So here is a list of the people and their countries on the who have visited me:

There is no particular order, but I decided to start from left (top to bottom), 

then to the right (top to bottom).

North & South America

Canada

United States

Mexico

Columbia

Venezuela

Peru

Chile

Argentina

Uruguay

Europe

Portugal

Spain

France

Great Britain

Germany

The Netherlands (Holland)

Denmark

Switzerland

Austria

Poland

Ukraine

Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan

Russia

Africa

Ethiopia

Nigeria

Namibia

South Africa

Madagascar

Asia

China

Pakistan

India

Bangladesh

Myanmar (Burma)

Sri Lanka

Thailand

Cambodia

Malasia

Laos

Vietnam

Japan

South Korea

Brunei

Indonesia/ Sumatra/Java

Philippines

East Timor

Australia

New Zealand

*****

And if I have not included you, please feel free to write to me,

and I'll gladly add you to the list.

200,000

   Of course, 200,000 is just a number. When I first started to blog, I would only receive a few visitors each day. I had retired from teaching and decided one day to write about toys. If you read my first post from a few years ago, you'll be able to read what actually gave me the idea to blog about toys.

readership now helps to motivate me. I try to keep my research and writing to no more that 1-2 hours a day, so as to not get too focussed on this. I seldom make any money from this activity (not that money is a motivator), but it's been a great learning experience, and fun at the same time.

   My next achievement will be to see how many page views that I will have by the end of the year. I know that it will be above the previous years, but  will never be added to the top 10,000 website or even the top 100,000 websites in the world. 

   However, for all of you who have helped me achieve these milestones, thank you very much, and you are always welcome to be  guest on my blog - I usually never know what I will be writing in the immediate future, and I always welcome "surprises."

Than toy all for dropping by to visit,

and as always,

have a great day or night

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com

Some "Treasures" Re-released a Few at a Time

Saturday, March 1, 2014
     (Very cold and partly Sunny)

Some "Treasures" Re-released a 

Few at a Time

   I was visiting my Facebook pages earlier today,when  I went to some of the groups that I belong to. I went to one of them, and saw a nice Manoil toy, (USA), and  decided to add one of own photos to that page. On Facebook, there are many toy groups, so I decided to join  some of them.  I made requests to join, and I was accepted. HAving added one of my Manoil toys on Facebook, I decided to add a post for today. If you search out my blog, you'll find several entries, and these little toys are actually quite popular. 

   Sadly,the company doesn't exist anymore, but there are still many,many of these fine futuristic-looking cars (for today), and of course, the more common-looking toy. I decided to photo-edit them for today, because they are just so beautiful and deserve some sprucing up.  I decided only to present 5 today, so that I wouldn't  dilute the beauty of them, by placing my usual 10 or more photos.

   I don't know where everyone else is living, but as far as Montreal goes, this cold weather we've being having in February is not even fit for the birds. The meteorologists are evening predicting a colder than normal March! So keep bundled up,and if you don't venture out,  you can always read more of my blog posts!

Thanks for dropping by, 

'and have a great (warm) day, 

wherever you may be.

Stacey

write to me anytime at:

toysearcher@gmail.com

Having Fun with Self-Promotion Fun on the Social Media

Friday, February 28, 2014
     (Sunny, windy, and very cold)

Having Fun with Self-Promotion

on the Social Media

This happens to be my 700th post on this blog, 

with a total page view count of 145730 at 1250 P.M. EST (Canada).

On February 16, of this month, I added a post about Facebook.  I joined the "social media" of Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook in order to broadcast my blog. So far, it's what I call a "slog". It's going to take work and lots of ideas to get people to visit my blog. Linkedin is more serious,. That's a company and website where you might be looking for work in your field.  You write up tour CV (Curriculum Vitae) or work and background experience. For a wider promotion to reach moire people, you need to pay and depending upon who and how many people you'd like to try and "Link" with, the more you have to pay. I use the no-pay level, so I', not having many people see me.

  Eac of the 3 sites that I've mentioned work differently, and it's interesting and fun to write something on each . However, for today, I'm just going to present the photos (all of my own) that I have added to the three website. I've been photo-editing them both to have some fun, and to grab people's attention. I've go that already on Facebook. but I don't know how that translates into new viewer to my blog. O've joined several Facebook clubs such as old toys, cast iron toys, truck groups and so forth, and I get to post on their sites.,and vice-versa.

That's my own watermark that I've been adding to my own photos. I used to simply have my photos on Picasa and Flickr, and on my blog. Then I started noticing people and companies promoting that big auction sit using my photos for a profit! I had to send a few letters asking them "politely" to remove those photos. Now,whenever I use my own photo, or someone else's each photo had a watermark and a copyright notice. However, even that does;t always deter "borrowers".

Those brighter spots are called "highlights" in photographic terms. I'll usually use small mirrors ore highly-reflective small pieces of  silver cardboard to produce them when taking photographs. However, you can do almost the same with photo-editing software.

When I first started this blog, I'd buy toys on ebay, then resell them. At that time, ebay allowed you one free photo, and 6 others were about $ 1.45. I decided to simply combine 4 photos into a larger one and add that to each listing. It was getting quite expensive to keep  paying for more photos.

 In 2013,  ebay decided to let everyone have 12 free photos,and have the images enlarge for free. I would like to "dream" that my images changed everything on  ebay, but that would be totally dreaming "big time". But I can dream, can't I?

By the way ( as I shamelessness promote by Facebook pages):

I have 3 pages on Facebook:

stacey.bindman

Please click here to redirect to my Facebook page

Oldantiquetoys

Please click here to visit another of my Facebook pages

Oldantiquetoys

Please click here to visit my third Facebook page

I think that the differences between the 2 Facebook pages titles "oldantiquetoys" is that one of them is commercial, and one of them is personal. Anyway, I keep busy for about  20 minutes a week adding  photos and some dialogue. It's like a blog, but I only add 1 photo or 2, and some short dialogue. While taking about short dialogue, Twitter is a "blast". You can add only 144 characters, so people add a lot of abbreviations and drop the vowels. I think I'm rewriting the Twitter language, and I also think people might be having trouble figuring out what I'm saying! You can only say so much with 144 characters!

Thanks for dropping by,
and as always, 
have a great part of the day or night.
Stacey
Please feel free to write to me anytime at:
toysearcher@gmail.com

Replacement Parts for a Small Hubley Airflow

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Replacement Parts 

for a Small Hubley Airflow

   The last toy that I purchased was a Hubley cast iron Airflow. The original car was made by Chrysler, but wasn't a success. Production only lasted about 3 years. But it was a beautiful car, and if you do a search through my blog, or go on the Net, you will see just how beautiful this car was.  Ironically, almost every one of the major toy manufacturers of the time (e.g. Hubley, Arcade, Kingsbury for example) made these Airflow toys, and the total number of these toys was probably at least a million or more!. Any one of the Airflow toys is one of my favourites just for its elegant design.

  I ordered replacement parts for this Hubley (5"/125mm in length) since it came with the parts missing.

Part I - The Hubley with missing parts

The toy came with 3 hubs and a few white tires, but I decoded to replace everything.

If I didn't, the combination of old and new would look out of place and irregular.  

However, in the end, I kept one old red wooden hub. I'll explain the reason for that at the end.

The above part is the underneath chassis. It was a patented designed past that allowed the wheels to be attached to it. The attachment of the underside chassis with the frame was quite unique. By attaching the rubber tire to the red wooden hub at the rear of the car (the spare tire), the 2 parts stayed together. You'll be able to better understand and see what I'm talking about with the next sequence of photos.

Part II - The ordered missing parts

The left part of the photo is the back of the car. The 2 rims are loose and can fall off. 

However,when they are attached together into the car, the rear fenders that completely cover the tire hold them in place. The reason the rear tires and hubs can fall off is that the axle is not hammered at either end.

The front axle is id different. It is rounded at one end to keep both hubs and tires on the axle. The reason, is because there axles are exposed, so that unless the ends of the axles are carefully hammered with a ball-head hammer, they can fall off.

I had to carefully drill through the hubs to slightly widen the diameter of the holes through their centres. I then used a small amount of ayer to soften the wood, and carefully moved the wooden hubs along the axle. 

To get the rubber (they might be silicone-rubber combinations) tires on to the  wooden red hubs, I warmed them up slightly and used a mild soap to slip them on the axles. I then carefully fired any excess water so that the ere would not be any dripping. However, the wood hubs are painted quite well, and there wasn't any dripping of paint from the water.

The 2 photos above show you how the 2 pieces of the cast iron car fit together.

Once the rubber tire is placed on the metal "hub) at the back of the car, the 2 parts of the car are firmly attached together. The larger diameter white tire acts like a nut to firmly hold the car together.

The idea is so simple, but unique - hence the patent to Hubley for the idea and design.

For now, I'm leaving the well-aged and scratched and rusted toy "as is". You can see what a beautiful toy this was and still is. Hubley made many different sizes of this car, and they all are great. There was even one with a battery and front headlights. That is one of the more expensive and sought after Chrysler Airflows.

If you look at the last photo, that red hub is the original. I left it there because I didn't want to chase breaking one the the replacement wooden hubs by drilling, and then getting then on to the front axle. As it turned out, the work was much simpler.

Of course, an easier way would have been to simply buy a new front axle altogether. 

But then again, I like a small challenge. What fun would there be if I replaced every part on this 80 year old toy?

Thanks for visiting,

and have a great day, 

wherever you may be,

Stacey

You can contact me anytime at:

toysearcher@gmail.com