Very Useful Resources

Sunday, January 14, 2018
Sunny and Cold
-20 C -4 F

Very Useful Resources

Please click here to visit this world-renowned toy auctioneer

Please click here to visit this auctioneer management company

One of the difficult things when working with old and antique toys is to find out who made them, and whether or not they are "authentic". The most useful resources are reputable and known auction houses or antique dealers near you. However, many will not be familiar with toys.

Great resources are on the Internet, and both Bertoia Auctions and Liveauctioneers are 2 excellent resources for the toy collector. You can visit each resource or you have the choice to go to Liveauctioneers, where Bertoia Auctions is one of their clients. For those who don't already know,

Liveauctioneers is an auction management company for auctioneers. This site presents the toys from Bertoia Auctions, aswell as running the auction. Bertoia Auctions also has a concurrent 

(at the same time)  auction at their own website.

Both websites keep past auctions on their websites, and this helps to find out what you're toy might be, who made it, and the "estimated" value of your toy. Of course, there are many factors that determine the value of a toy, so you cannot rely on either sites as determining the value of your toy, but roughly the estimate. Factors include who the auctioneer might be, how the economy is doing, the rarity of the toy, the condition of the toy, and whether or not parts are missing from the toy.

If you happen to have a toy like this ,then if you searched out Liveauctioneers or Bertoia Auctions, you would eventually find this toy. However, Bertoia Auctions has not identified this toy in terms of which manufacturer manufactured it.

Another resource happens to be old toy catalogues or reproductions of old toy catalogues. 

ATCA, or The Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc.  is a very good resource as a group.Members share their toys at their annual convention, and the website of ATCA has catalogues on their site for you to view.

Please click here to view the antique toy catalogues of ATCA

Below is a screen-capture of the past auctions from Bertoia Auctions. The left arrow indicates that on the Liveauctioneers website, there are 70 past auctions to be found there.

If you search hard enough, you will have found the large-sized ice wagon

 I also happen to have a reproduction  of a Hubley Catalogue that I found on ebay. It was reproduced by The Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc. for one of their conventions. I don't know what year the catalogue is for, but it looks to be from the 1920's or even earlier. The toy may or not be a Hubley (e.g. Bertoia Auctions) did not name the toy a Hubley. As such, another thing to know is that many manufacturers of the time made similar toys. Unless there are any Hubley names on the toy, we might not say its' a Hubley. Nevertheless, it does have a value for such an old toy.

The catalogue scan below is from an old toy company named Nerlich & co.

Their catalogue illustration presents the toy size and description, but does not identify the 

the manufacturer.

Thanks for dropping by,

And have a great part of the day or night,

Wherever you may be.

Stacey Bindman

Toysearcher@gmail.com

New Cavendish Books

Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Cloudy with sunny periods
3C  38 F

New Cavendish Books

( Old Car Models)

Please click here to visit this fine publishing company

   Old catalogues and books are great resources for those who like to collect toys. These resources offer excellent information, and help to identify and try to authenticate if your toys are exactly what you think they are. 

New Cavendish Books  is a fine publishing company that happens to have an extensive collection of books about toys, as well as reproductions of old toy catalogues. I'm planning to write a post about some of the fine Bing toys that Morphy Auctions is listing for sale.

Yoy can in fact visit Liveauctioneers at the address below to see the fine toys

that are up for auction in the December 16-17, 2017 auction . That address is below:

Please click here to visit the Morphy Auctions' auction

The scans below are from the 1912 Bing Toy catalogue.

You can use these scans as a resource to see which of your toy cars from the Morphy Auctions' auction resemble the cars up for auction. Of course, this is the 1912 catalogue, so some of Morphy Auctions's items may not match the catalogue, as they are from earlier years. Nevertheless, the scans illustrate to the viewer the style and resemblance to earlier toys.  And of course, Morphy Auctions is a very reputable auctioneer who has specialized departments and personnel who  research and authenticate old and antique toys.

So that's it for today.

Thanks for dropping by,

And as always,

Have a great part of the day or night,

Wherever you may be.

Toysearcher@gmail.com

Stacey Bindman

The Antique Toy Collectors of America Inc.

Thursday, November 2, 2017
Overcast
8 C  46 F

The Antique Toy Collectors of America, Inc. 

Please click here to visit this fabulous resource for toy collectors

 I've written about  The Antique Toy Collectors of America Inc.  (ATCA) before, but never a post.  So when I revisited them, I was amazed to discover that they had a new addition to their website that I hadn't seen before my last visit.  The new addition or section was titled ATCA Toy Catalogs, at the top of the page (please see where the arrow is pointing below).

The mission statement of  ATCA is shown below.

To join ATCA, you must have certain conditions (criteria) which can be found below:

Please click here to see the requirements to join ATCA

Below is a list of what ATCA is all about, and the advantages for joining ATCA.

You can decide for yourself if this fine resource is for you.

Below is a sample of some of the 57 catalogues that they have on their website. ATCA also is always updating their catalogues as they find them.

Below are some sample book covers and their respective pages

The Gong Bell Company was famous for their toys with bells. 

The Kenton Hardware catalogue is the early one

You can tell it's early from the type of fire "wagons" and horses that are teamed together.

The A. Schoenhut Catalogue from 1905 has a sample page that illustrates samples of circus toys
together with their ladders. I would assume that these toys are hard to find complete with their respective parts.

This Hubley catalogue is from about the late 1930's-early 1940's .
The sample page is of their famous motorcycles. Hubley and many
other manufacturers made lots of these cast-iron toys.

This is a pre-war (WWII) catalogue of the Tippco Company from Germany.

They are famous for their fine airplanes, including three that has lights, operated by a battery.

On the ATCA website, the catalogues are shown in their entirety.
What is great about the ATCA website is being able to check to see who 
might have manufactured them I'm not a member of ATCA, but for some people, this is an
interesting organization that you might consider joining. By being a member, you can write to the organization to help you identify a particular toy, and that's a big help.

The Ives, Blakeslee & Williams Company

Monday, July 17, 2017
Overcast with rain forecast
20 C  68 F

The Ives, Blakeslee

& Williams Company

   A reader wrote to me last week asking if I had more scanned photos of an Ives, Blakeslee & Williams Company catalogue. He had visited my blog, and had found 3 posts on the company . I had written 3 posts about the American toy distributor company on September 30, 2016. I hadn't scanned the catalogue, but for a selection of images from the catalogue. The catalogue that I have is a June 1965 reprint of the Original 1893 catalogue ( 124 years ago).

  I didn't have the entire catalogue scanned, so I decided to scan it. I then contacted the reader to say that I scanned the entire catalogue, and if he wanted the catalogue, I'd send him a DVD with  all of the pages. All he had to do is send me his address. The reader had just started to collect mechanical toys, and was interested in further becoming more knowledgeable about old toys.

  The catalogue is a cornucopia of all kinds of toys and playthings that would have been around in the 1890's. Most, if not all of the toys are "hand-on" toys that would be played with indoors or outdoors.  THere are other interesting toys that I did not include in the 10 photos that I selected. There were model steam engines, fireworks, batteries, cameras,toy steam engine attachments, and fireworks. What's interesting is that there are no warnings in the catalogue to warn children and their parents to be careful when playing with these toys. Steam engines produce scalding steam heat, and fireworks, of course could be explosive and dangerous. Perhaps there were written instructions and cautionary notes included with the toys.

  What especially interesting to not  are the p[rices of these wholesale toys. The  mechanical locomotives below are sold by the dozen for the piece of $ 24.00 (U.S.) for 12\, while the Montauk toy guns are sold for $ 9.00 (U.S.) per gross (144 pieces).

    So that's it for this overcast and potential raining day of July 17, 2017. This spring and Summer have not been the best of seasons. We've has lots of cloudy and rainy days here in Montreal. I have a small piece of land that I rent out from my city, and I grow vegetables. I hardly have to visit it, because of the  amount of rain that has fallen. Of course, I shouldn't complain. On the west coast of Canada, in the province of British Columbia, the weather has been sunny and hot, and dry! As a consequence, there have been major forest fires, and evacuations of cities to protect the people. I hope the weather will improve for August and September, but we can only hope.

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

Some Bing Motor Cars

Sunday, October 16, 2016
Overcast and Raining
16 Celcius 61 Fahrenheit

Some Bing Motor Cars

Please click here to visit this fine American toy auctioneer

This is  a post continuing from my previous post of today.This time, the post is about the Bing  motor cars or automobiles. The car photos are courtesy of Bertoia auctions, while  the scanned catalogue images are once again courtesy of New Cavendish Book (first printing 2001).

I purposely left out the written descriptions of the toy photos, so that you would look at the descriptions from the print catalogue of the 1912 edition of "The 1912 Bing Toy Catalogue".

    

THe photo below is not quite an exact match to its' catalogue scan above, but its' close. The 

photo below could be an earlier (pre-1912) or a later version of the catalogued toy.

The above photo matches the lower left scanned car. However, these is no chauffeur to be found in the car. Either there wasn't one in the toy, or perhaps the car is an earlier or later version simply did not have a chauffeur. Alternatively, the chauffeur could have been lost over the period of 100 years.

I was fortunate to find 2 Bertoia Auctions photos to match this catalogue 

page of the 1912 Bing catalogue. 

The Bertoia Auctions photo is once again lacking a chauffeur. The same reason that I previously mentioned for the top photo could apply to this car. As always, the excellent photography from Bertoia, certainly makes this toy stand out on the page.

So that's it for today.

I hope that you liked the Carrette and Bing catalogue match-ups.

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

hyave a great part of the day  or night,

wherever yopu may be.

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com