Before the 1920s most costume jewelry was made to resemble “the real thing” for those who couldn’t afford jewelry made from costly gems and precious metals. The flappers changed all that. After years of deprivation and sacrifice experience during World War I these young women wanted to have fun. They rebelled against the hardships of wartime by cutting off their waist length tresses, raising their hemlines from the ankle to the knee and partying into the wee hours. When it came to jewelry, they eschewed tasteful gold jewelry for costume pieces in trendy shapes and wild colors.

Couturier and style icon Coco Chanel embraced the costume jewelry trend and encouraged women to use fun costume jewels to accessorize their outfits and express their personalities. Jewelry designers experimented more with the relatively inexpensive materials, and the resulting styles were fun and whimsical.

It was in this environment that plastic jewelry first reached widespread popularity. The plastics most commonly used were Lucite, celluloid and Bakelite. The chemical company Dupont introduced acrylic resin under the trade name Lucite in 1937. Lucite was a colorless plastic that could be carved and molded into different shapes and dyed various shades to create attractive jewelry choices. Lucite was popular throughout the 1940s and is still seen in costume jewelry today.

Celluloid was used in jewelry as early as the 1870s as an alternative to expensive materials like ivory and tortoiseshell. Unfortunately, celluloid had its disadvantages, a major one being that it contained nitric acid, which was very flammable. Jewelry made from celluloid was produced until after World War II, but the development of cheaper plastics (that didn’t catch fire!) caused jewelry makers to abandon the substance. Celluloid jewelry should be kept in a dry, airy place and kept from extreme heat or cold to keep the pieces from damage. Pieces that have already begun to crack and disintegrate can damage other celluloid pieces and should be kept away from them.

Bakelite was created in 1908 and was quickly adopted for use in everything from tabletops to bracelets. Like cellulose, Bakelite was abandoned for cheaper materials after the war, and today Bakelite items are highly sought by collectors.

Read more about Bakelite: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/36293/bakelite_collectible_plastic.html

In the music world, a good bootleg is worth its weight in gold: they’re a recording of a live performance, or an obscure recording that was never really meant to make it to public. Somehow, somewhere, a bootleg finds it’s way into the hands of a collector and becomes much sought after.

Other collectible industries, however, know ‘bootlegs’ as the knock-offs, the poor-quality alternatives. The pottery and glassware markets see the most convincing and least valuable of the counterfeit collectibles, but one genre has a booming industry, one that’s overlooked yet available almost everywhere: the toy industry.

I doubt there’s a kid today who hasn’t played with a ‘bootleg’ toy, the gift from the distant aunt who didn’t know what to buy, the toy bought at the grocery store to stop the kid from complaining, the four things that allowance money can buy at the dollar store instead of the one at Toys R Us: bootleg toys are sometimes more available than the regular brand-names, because they’re the toys that end up at gas stations, grocery stores, in vending machines and at flea markets.

The fun in collecting bootlegs is the sheer variety of what can be found: often, to skirt the legality of the knock-offs, the packaging and name is completely changed, making it all the more difficult to locate a ‘genuine’ bootleg. Consider these bootlegs, bought at the local dollar store:

(click to view larger image)

To many people, these look like they were created after 9/11 to feed of the whole anti-terrorist genre: action figures belonging to the “Counter-Terrorist Units” of Extreme Troop. It’s an international team of good guys, each skilled in fighting terrorism in his or her own way, according to the back of the card — but an expert eye knows exactly who these figures are. What is sold here as “Extreme Troop” are knock-offs of GI Joe figures. Have a look:

The woman, in GI Joe parlance, is “The Baroness,” one of the bad guys of Cobra. The bootleggers didn’t even bother to remove the moulded cobra-heads on her wrists, belt buckle, and backpack - - aside from the poor quality of the duplication, she’s a dead-wringer for the original Baroness toy. The other is a Cobra Commander variant, one I don’t own the original for, but, again, is a dead-on duplication of the original, and collectors will recognize Snake Eyes, Mutt, and a number of other famous likenesses on the card back, relabeled and repackaged as something completely different.

I wasn’t out on the hunt for cool toys that day — I think I was looking for stocking-stuffers, actually — but I still ended up with the thrill usually reserved for finding a rare figurine at an estate sale. It’s the rush of the unexpected, and given the multitude of cheap imported toys on shelves today there’s no reason not to stop by the dollar store. For collectors who feel their collection already has ‘everything’ (or at least everything they can afford), adding bootlegs gives the collection a texture that purists lack. The inexpensive nature of the toys also makes it an easier direction to get started in without requiring a huge investment. For the price of one rare GI Joe figure, I could have filled my trunk with the entire rack of Extreme Troop toys. All kinds of toys are bootlegged, but they are rarely well organized or easily found, and it is actually the sign of a well-trained eye to notice a bootleg despite the wrong paint colors and being labeled something entirely different. Iin fact, some of the rarer bootlegs end up more valuable than the original toy! If running back and forth between thrift shops, rummage sales, or auctions is wearing thin, take some time and stop at the truck stop. There might be some treasure to be found!

More on bootleged toys:

• Bootleg Toys The Undiscovered Playthings
• RTM’s Bootleg Watch
• Bootleg and Just Plain Weird toys.
• An unbelievably thorough Star Wars bootleg list