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Vindex Fokker Trimotor or Arcade F-10A Cast Iron, which is it?
What is old knowledge can now be scrutinized with fresh catalog data and a century of new data. My objective this last week was to ID a Fokker Trimotor cast iron and confirm its maker. O’Brien’s Toy guide states it was made by Arcade. Right now I can’t find any Arcade catalogs or ads to support…
Read MoreCast Iron Toys and Antique cast iron
Cast iron toy and Antique cast iron collecting Cast iron toy collecting seems to consistently create a love hate relationship. Love them for beauty; hate them for rarity. Love them for the history; hate them because the historic ones don’t get offered for sale often. Love them for their craftsmanship; hate them when you get…
Read MoreToy Restorations. Do I do an Antique Toy Restoration? Cast iron and tin thoughts.
Toy Restorations. Do I do an Antique Toy Restoration? Cast iron and tin thoughts. Do you need a toy restoration? Should I restore a toy? How do I restore my toys? My response, probably not, probably not, and consider just preserving it as-is. Do you need a toy restoration?– I would argue ‘No’ for 90% of the…
Read MoreVintage Toys for sale locally
Lately I’ve been spending a good amount of time locally looking for antiques and vintage toys of interest. As always, you look for toy X and find toy Y, and inevitably one finds older toys that aren’t quite antiques. Let’s call them vintage toys. Well all around St. Petersburg we have vintage stores, thrift stores…
Read MoreConsigning Old Toys to Sell – Selling Antique Toys
So the other day my client and I were in a dilemma. We had an incredibly unique old toy, one that was a desirable antique without many comparable sales. She asked me to make and offer, but I wasn’t comfortable buying it outright, especially when condition wasn’t easy to review at a distance. She was concerned…
Read MoreKenton Toys and Heavy Dray aka Stake Wagon
This particular Two Horse wagon has been quite a challenge to look-up and define in detail. The reason being, Kenton had two periods of producing cast iron horse toys– one from the 1900’s to about the 1940’s, then another less detailed production in the 1950’s. The plethora of variants takes time to sift through. Then…
Read MoreArcade Taxi with Number 9
Here we go again with another interesting Arcade cast iron find. This time the taxi has “No. 9″ marked on the door and is also a custom run. The unearthed toy came from Florida of all places. It also came with a postage stamp commemorating the toy in the early 2000’s. More details to come,…
Read MoreJ.E. Stevens Co. catalog from 1906- Banks, Safes, and Cast Iron
1906 Was a prodigious year for J & E Stevens and we are blessed to have paperwork to prove it. The Great War to End All Wars and then the second World War converted countless pieces of paper and metal toys into munitions and fuel. Yet there was at least one surviving catalog to enjoy…
Read MoreOld Toy Friends and Networking
In the age of Tweets, Likes, captures, snaps, et. al. it is so great to meet collectors in person. Visits like the one I enjoyed last week make me want to drop the computer in the trash & network with only an old phone, two hands, two eyes, and two feet. This Sunday a vintage car collector invited me…
Read MoreArcade Taxi Review – A Savannah, GA Find
Peering into the flat matt of dust, smoke residue, and pet hair; I started to recognize the outline of a vintage Arcade toy. Looking closer, the store owner’s find began to take shape as a Number 2 size Yellow Cab from the early 1900’s.
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