A look back: Some of the best buys in antique toys
Article from American Home, December 1974
Antique toys are double-barreled delights. They arouse pleasant remembrances and reflect good design. If you’re Christmas-gift shopping and are willing to spend $10 to $95, the choices are rich.
Look for toys made between 1860 and 1920. Earlier ones are too hard to find; later ones, less appealing.
The examples we show [black & white images only] are from the antique toy department of FAO Schwartz, New York.
Vintage monkey toy bank
The monkey, a mechanical bank, tips its hat when a coin is dropped into the slot.
The bank, made sometime after 1880, is of stamped iron — a budget substitute for heavier cast iron.
Antique spinning optical toy for kids
This museum piece is a bit broken, but you can see a round spinning pice here on the front, and a round piece within the box, too.
Antique stuffed animals: Early Winnie the Pooh characters
Photos courtesy New York Public Library
Antique toy from 1892 – Star Bell Hoop rolling hoop
ALSO SEE: Rolling hoops used to be the coolest toys around
Toy soldier
$10 buys this toy soldier dressed in 18th-century uniform, though he’s probably a product of the 19th century, when historical models became very popular. He could as easily be a drummer in the French and Indian Wars as in the American Revolution.
Aside from rare earlier examples, toy soldiers are part of a tradition begun in the 1700s. Germany made flat models; France, dimensional ones.
Tin and lead alloys were used until [the 1970s]. The hollow-casting technique, which made metal figures lighter and less costly, was introduced by an English manufacturer about 1890.
MORE: About Tiddlywinks: The history of the old-fashioned game people keep rediscovering
More vintage soldier & battle toy figurines
Vintage dancing man toy from around the 1840s
Antique board games
$30 is what you’ll pay for Autograph Authors, one of innumerable card and board games introduced after 1860.
For this price, you’ll receive an impressive supply of portraits of significant American authors of the 1880s. All are sure to be as enjoyable to look at now as the game was once to play. They are done in a realistic style typical of magazines of the period.
An old game may not be practical for playing, but owning it provides an appealing — and amusing — interpretation of the styles of yesterday.
ALSO SEE: 50+ old-fashioned games: Take look back at what people played 100 years ago
Antique dollhouse furniture
$70 is the price of this set of mini “bentwood” furniture. It was designed for a child to use when playing with dolls and is beautifully inconsistent in detail — a refreshing contrast to the more sophisticated work intended for adult appreciation.
Besides using wood, turn-of-the-century toy furniture craftsmen occasionally used paper and metal. This set reflects the charm of life-size designs that were fashionable in rustic country cabins.
Antique ceramic baby dolls
$70 is not unreasonable for a realistic ceramic baby doll from the period just after World War I.
The idea of making children’s dolls dates from about 1850, but first efforts were simply small-scale versions of adult figures, extremely well-dressed.
[Around the 1920s], a number of sculptors took pains to determine what was characteristic of babies physically, and dolls like this one were the result. Early examples of doll figures are rarer and more costly.
Miniatures & more antique scenes
$75 would be a good buy for this barnyard scene in miniature, because it shows off the wood-carver’s skills so beautifully.
We picture only a portion of the set, which includes other trees and people and many more pairs of farm animals, all of which have the charm of folk art.
These wood figures were a specialty of German carvers of the late 19th century, but American and Scandinavian craftsmen did similar work on occasion.
Antique puzzle blocks
$90 is a fair price for a set of picture blocks that children played with as puzzles and also as building blocks in the 1880s.
Each wood square is covered with six different picture pieces, which when put together create six city scenes. New York, Venice, London and Paris are readily identifiable, but others from the Near and Far East are not easy to recognize — or put together.
The scenes — lithographs done in the spirit of such printmakers as Currier and Ives — appealed to the public’s expanding interest in color.
Mini tea set for kids
$95 will purchase this particularly attractive mini tea set from the mid-19th century. It duplicates both a shape and a pattern that were popular in the 1790s.
The wide interest in doll houses, beginning in the late 18th century, inspired potters everywhere to produce small-scale wares.
If there is a collector on your Christmas list and you have time to shop widely, you will find antique miniatures of just about every type of pottery made.
MORE: 47 dangerous old playgrounds that our great-grandparents somehow survived
Antique toy drums
Vintage paper doll costume
A blue formal dress with white trim and red flower garlands
Toy-size child’s antique pocket watch
Little girl riding on an antique hobby horse
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