Toy Time Over The Years: Your Next Collection

Daughter number one suggested a contemplation on my own toys from my childhood. Sitting back to examine this year’s holiday period, I was struck with the vastness of the selection of toys and games available. It is a time for giving presents, especially to our young grand kids.

But what possesses all adults to bestow vast quantities of disposable stuff on these adolescents? Toys are designed, packaged and advertised to appeal to children – “I want, I want, I want” and to adults – “This looks neat”, “They’re only young once”, “ I wish I had one of these when I was a kid”.

And when we lavish them with these riches, is it their reward or our own? “Don’t open that! It’s really a collectible”, “Here, let me show you how this works”, “Open the next one, you can play with this one later.”

But how did my and our children’s generation get into this frenzy of buying and giving, at this holiday season and on occasions such as birthdays or days of the week that have a “U” in them? Is it a reaction to feeling shorted or unloved by our parents, or a desire to out-do our friends and neighbors?

My parents lived through the excesses of the Roaring Twenties, good times and shared wealth, toy companies prospered by making dolls, games, sports equipment and toy vehicles. Then they entered the era of the great depression. My parents met and married and lived with my grandparents because money was tight and our family supported several extended family members to help them through tough times.

Read any tome on toy companies and discover how many disappeared during the Thirties. When I came into my parents’ lives, the world was entering into the Second World War and while wealth was restored, toy companies, if still in business, were pressed into making sundry military products or simply could not get the raw material for production.

Resourceful parents did the best they could to provide some things for their young, paying enormously inflated prices for remaining new items, finding used items or receiving hand-me-downs from family or friends.

A tricycle was purchased missing one of its rear axles. Dad was a printer and traded some services, (letterheads and business cards) to a local machine shop to grind down a bar of steel, drill a cotter pin hole and weld it onto the frame. A wood block formed the pedals and it lacked the rubber grips on the handle bar. But I Had A Bike.

He also joined a local social center, located in a middle school, where boys were taught shop and girls learned home making skills. In the evenings, classes were held for adults, where Mom learned to hand paint china dishes and Dad took woodworking, with the express purpose of building a coaster wagon as a present for me. It is still cherished to this day. The school was given sets of wheels and hardware by a manufacturer that could not continue to make wagons during the war. (Probably the only time Dad ever used a saw or drill.)

Was it any wonder that after war’s end and the baby boomers were showing up, success came to companies like Lionel, and Ertl who were making toys for boys and Marx, Renwal, Fisher-Price and Ideal who made doll house furnishings, plastic dolls and other toys for girls. ( I still have most of my Lionel train set.)

It would seem each year Santa has been more generous in providing gifts of games, toys and sporting goods, and now electronics (role playing – virtual) as each generation must out-do the previous.

But what should the collector be looking for today?

Most toys of great vintage, pre-Thirties, are in the hands of collectors already. The scarce items produced in the depression era, and the Forties and early Fifties should provide for an enjoyable hunting experience, will display easily in a home, and produce a good return in the future.

Baby boomers will be off-loading these keepsakes, stored and forgotten in attics and basements, as they move into retirement communities or downsize into condos. This should give the young collector the opportunity in the coming years to visit moving and estate sales for these collectibles.

Many books provide detailed documentation on specific categories and/or manufacturers to guide you to the proper investment of your time and rubles. As they say on Antiques Road Show, the box is as good as the toy. Condition and completeness are factors, remember toys were played with and parts were often broken off or lost.

Good hunting in this New Year.

“Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect – Join our Collectors’
Community”