Musical Knickknack from Western Germany

Q:  This musical knickknack was in my grandparents’ house ever since I was a little girl. It was passed on to me. At first, I thought it was broken because it makes a clicking sound as it plays music, but then I realized when you hold it up to the light and look through the […]

Vintage Popeye Toys: Biceps on Display

Comic book, movie and cartoon star Popeye, the good-natured, sailor with bulging biceps and a love of spinach, turned 91 this year. A recent Rich Penn auction in Iowa brought high prices for mechanical Popeye toys, many with price-adding original boxes. A rare mechanical steel and tin toy of Popeye sitting in a boat, holding […]

Happy National Yo-Yo Day!

June 6 is  National Yo-Yo Day,  celebrated each year since 1990. Did you know that yo-yo’s have been around for about 2,000 years, first played with in ancient Greece? Modern yo-yo’s were popularized in the Philippines, with the word “yo-yo” first appearing in a Filipino dictionary in 1860. They became popular in the 1930s, with […]

Interest in Miniature Stoves Heating Up

In the early 1900s, salesmen traveled the country to sell stoves, furniture and other products. They often carried miniature models of their wares made with the same materials and details as their full-size counterparts. A recent Rich Penn auction in Iowa featured 30 salesman’s sample stoves, along with children’s toy stoves. Prices ranged from $60 […]

Tootsietoy

The first Tootsietoy was a limousine made about 1911 by the Dowst Brothers Company of Chicago. It was followed in 1914 by a toy Model T Ford. By 1926 about 50 million Tootsietoy Model Ts had been produced. The Tootsietoy name, inspired by founder Charles Dowst’s granddaughter, Tootsie, was not registered until 1924 and did […]

Toys

Toys can often tell you when and where they were made. A recent sale of Easter toys included a tin rabbit that was marked “Germany … Made in U.S. Zone.” Country names in the marks on toys, figurines, dishes and other collectibles may tell the exact time the piece was made because boundaries and names […]