A New Discovery - Uebelacker Tin Ships

  Sunday, July 27, 2014
Thunder, lightning, overcast and rain

A New Discovery

Uebelacker Tin Ships

    Lately, I've added a few post for a marvellous auction from Bertoia Auctions that will be occurring on September 19-20, 2014 of this year. The collection that is up for sale has an amazing array of toys that I haven't seen before. For today's post, there is in fact 1 of these Uebelacker ships for sale. I decided to add the others from previous auctions to talk about the fine true antique tin ships of the early 1900's.

   I haven't as yet been able to find much information on this manufacturer from Germany. The toys were made of tin and hand painted. The larger-sized toy boats (ships) would have wind-up mechanisms and would be self-propelled with their rear driven propellers. Te company produced  their toys in the early 1900's.

Please click here to visit this fine American Auctioneer

Coincidentally, the Uebelacker ship below is the one that I discoed for among the many toys slated for the September 19-20, 2014 auction. It also happens to be the largest and most ornate of today's presentation.

The length is a massive 21" (533 mm), and it's clockwork (wind-up driven with a key winding application. What's most beautiful are the hand-painted die cast figures, and the fine curtain detail that appear on the upper deck cabin just behind the smokestack. There also is a fine detail of a stairway leading to an observation deck. Notice also the merman ( or is it a mermaid) on the front of the bow.

The Uebelacker toys sometimes came in a set, as you can see above. These toys would be placed on park lakes and allowed to float around. Eventually they'd come ashore and be collected, or parents could wade into the shallow lakes with rubber boots and retrieve them by hand .

( I think I once saw a photo of this)

This nicely coloured toy came with a small dog that would have been at the stern (rear) of the rowboat. When the toy was wound with the attached red key in front of the boy, the oars would move back and forth to simulate the rowing .

I had originally intended to write a few posts on the Uebelacker toys, but decided to combine all of today's images into one post.

What interesting about the 3 boats below is that  they are in fact all similar. Many companies (even today) will use the same basic toy,then change either the colours or the features.

With the there boats below, you can see difference sod:

1. Passengers or no passengers

2. Paddlewheel or none

3. Canopy or no canopy

4. Differences in the country of origin flags.

1. The top flag is of course Germany

2. The red and white horizontal flag is an old flag of Rhenen (The Netherlands).

It's also the flag of Indonesia and Monaco. 

Would this  flag have represented Monaco at the time?

3. The bottom flag is that of the USA (United States) . 

At the time, the USA had 45 stars on the flag.

Today was a fine post about a newfound European (Germany) manufacturer. I also learned and hopefully will remember the name of the manufacturer - Uebelacker. I certainly spelled his name plenty of times!

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

The Marklin Civilian Ships

Saturday, May 25, 2013

The Marklin Civilian Ships

   I've presented a few of the Marklin ships in some of my posts, but have never dedicated an entire post to them. Marklin is still a you manufacturer, and  has been around for more than a century. The company was founded in 1859 and originally produced fine railroad sets (trains).  Their success led them to acquire other companies, which allowed them to diversify in terms of the range of toys that were produced. They still are in existence today, and still produce world-renowned toys for young people.

    Marklin produced outstanding ships from the early 1900's and later.  They were made probably of tinplate with clockwork driven mechanism to propel them in the water. Children would bring these boats to local parts with large-sized ponds, and the children would wind the toys up, and them let them move in the water.  I assume that the park lakes were shallow enough so that if the wind did not push the toy boat back to the sides of the lake, then a person could wade out and fetch the toy. Sometimes these park lakes also had rowboats for rent, so maybe helpful other people would help.

    Montreal has 2 large-sized park lakes . One is at the top of Mount Royal in the centre of our city, and the lake is called Beaver Lake. The other park is called Lafontaine park. I'm sure that at the beginning of the 20th century and earlier, these 2 parks has lots of local people and new immigrants who would go to these architecturally-designed parks. And I'm sure there were even children with sailboats, and perhaps even the occasional clockwork  driven boat.   I've never seen anyone play with a boat in these parts, but then again, my wife and I rarely go to them.

   The toy ships that I am presenting for today's post are the civilian types - ocean liners, river boats, and yachts. Their other type of  ships were the military battleships. I would highly recommend visiting the link below to read the outstanding narratives and descriptions that accompany all of the ships that I have presented today. When you go to the link, simply add the words "Marklin ships" in the search engine "keywords" space at the top of the page. 

Please click on this sentence to be redirected to Bertoia's fine Website

I wanted to present these beautiful ships in the way I've been presenting toys lately - against a white background. However,  all the fine details on these ships makes it harder to separate the grey tones from the ship.  Maybe in the future on a slow day, I'll rework the images., because personally, I like the way a toy "stands out" by itself against white. 

I like the way these toys even came with a metal roller support, so the child could pull the ship to the park lake. I'm sure the parents had lots of fun playing with these toys.

The riverboat above reminds me of the 1951 Kathryn Hepburn-Humphrey Bogart movie titled the African Queen. The movie had the same type of boat, by without the lifeboat. The movie boat ran by a steam engine.

     The last 10-12 days of  May here in Montreal have been miserable. It's been rain, rain, and more rain.  The good news is that I was able to reseed the bare spots on my lawn , and the grass is growing nicely.  Ironically, we has a water alert this week. A repair and maintenance crew accidentally let the water level in our largest reservoir and water purification plant get too low.  It's to early to assign blame, so the city will be conducting a review to find out what went wrong. As a consequence,  the bottom residue leaked out into the water pipes throughout much of the city. 1,200,000 were given "advisory  warnings" to boil their water for drinking or cooking. Bathing and shampooing were OK though. I bought water to wash my hair and shave. Some of the Starbucks cafes did not serve coffee for 2 days! Bottled water sold out in a few stores,and record sales were recorded!  

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a great day, 

wherever you may be.

Stacey