Halloween celluloid has been HOT these last few months after being somewhat cool for a year. The latest evidence is this listing. Wow!
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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.
SCARCE & VERY FINE Vintage Halloween Witch Face Diecut Decoration, Germany 1920s
My good friend has been listing a very nice collection of German diecuts these last few weeks. This has long been one of my favorite of the German designs. The Germans made a head-spinning number of Halloween diecuts for export beginning in the very early 1920s and continuing through about 1950, with a major interruption from about 1935 through 1946. Everything the Germans made for Halloween was exported. Some designs are more common than others. The rarest designs were made for a single season only, 1935, and exported to eastern Canada. Among these designs are the two devil bats, skulls with several varieties of hats, the two crawling baby designs and a Puss'N Boots, among others. This witch face isn't among those rarefied number, but is quite an eye catcher nonetheless. A much rarer variant is offered in my auction this year. The auction's preview period is happening now, with the auction itself beginning this Sunday. Check it out. By the way, you can't go wrong with this seller. She is truly one of the best out there.
2 VINTAGE 1950s HALLOWEEN NOISEMAKER CARDBOARD HORN GREAT GRAPHICS BOTH WORK !
These two lithoed paper over cardboard horns were produced by Bugle Toy of Providence, Rhode Island. The seller is correct in pointing out that textile spindles were reused in the manufacture of these noisemakers, an early and laudable example of recycling. Bugle was an odd company. They made memorably wacky tin litho Halloween noisemakers, different from their coma inducing designs on paper. It seems likely that a key art designer left the firm and was replaced by a hack, but who knows? Bugle tin litho items sell quickly, whereas most of their lithoed paper designs linger in the marketplace.
Circa 1910 Halloween Small Skeleton Ghost Black Cat Die Cut Stickers Decoration
This seller has a number of small paper items up right now, all cited as being older than they are. These two small seals were produced by Gibson and sold in the early 1920s in a boxed set of twenty. (See the top of page 264 for the set as well as the other I feel represent the very best designs Gibson made.) Complete Gibson boxed sets are quite hot now, and have been for some time. They were made in significantly smaller quantities than the slide boxes Dennison produced.
Vintage HALLOWEEN ONE 1920s Dixie Cup Flying Witches Haunted House Owl
This great cup, made by the Individual Drinking Cup Company of Easton, PA., was produced in 1933. They were sold in packages of ten. This is shown with a quote from one of their marketing brochures on page 297. These surface relatively often and typically trade for ~$25.
Vintage 1940's / 1950's Halloween: CAT and WITCH PARTY GAME by Whitman
Although arguably the most commonly seen Halloween-themed game out there, I've long enjoyed the simple graphics and premise of the game. Made by Whitman Publishing of Racine, Wisconsin in prodigious quantities for about a seven year span beginning in the mid-1930s, it surfaces regularly for sale and typically brings near or slightly above the seller's opening price. If they had designed the game just a decade later, the witch surely would have looked much less fearsome.
VERY RARE VINTAGE LOT 6 1950'S CARDBOARD HALLOWEEN CANDY FAVOR BOXES CONTAINERS
When I saw this listing's ending price, I thought it was too high. Interestingly, one of the underbidders let me know that she had received an email from the seller stating that the high bidder had walked away from his bid. I opined that a more sustainable price was around $400, so she offered that and it was accepted. I've seen the market value these candy boxes a bit more dearly than in the recent past.
VINTAGE HALLOWEEN TAMBOURINE GHOST,BAT WITCH BLACK CAT ,SKULL & OWL
This is not an easy tambourine to find, even though it was produced in the USA during the early 1960s. The seller is offering it as a BIN for $29.99, whereas guide value is $125 with an RSIN of 3. That is a very good deal.
Early 1900s German Wooden Cat Accordion Noisemaker--- Rare & Hard to Find
This is a wonderful vintage squeaker made in Germany around 1919-1920, at the beginning of the Golden Age of production immediately after WWI. According to the seller, the squeaker mechanism still works, rare for these old toys. However, I don't think this was made for Halloween, but maybe for Valentine's Day. The price seems right for what it is. If it was truly Halloween-themed, it would command perhaps double, plus some.
VINTAGE U.S.A. HALLOWEEN NOISEMAKER COLLECTION - LOT OF 9
This set of nine tin litho noisemakers from a variety of manufacturers is offered at an eminently reasonable BIN price of $125. Although the two-piece rattler looks problemtatic, the others look great. I'm surprised the listing has lasted this long, frankly. US tin litho items have cooled down considerably over the last decade, yet this is still a great deal. Someone snatch this right up!
Beistle's Halloween Party Helps 3 Mechanical Novelty Place Cards Witch/Cat/Ghost
This was a packaging variant I hadn't seen before, a bit earlier than the one on page 220, the envelope of which housed 4 items, but only these three designs. These great Beistle enveloped goods are very much in demand.
Devil With Flame Bottom- Made In Germany,1920's
This is a common diecut in uncommonly good condition. Nonetheless, the seller's start and BIN prices are the very definition of optimistic: $462.46 and $1156.16, respectively.
1920's Fabricius Mercantile Halloween Novelty Catalog, Rare!
I love wholesaler catalogs as they can give an insight into when things were made and how widespread was the distribution of goods. Fabricius Mercantile was a small-fry outfit in St. Louis. Once the founder's son died in 1919, his two sons took over and renamed the business Fabricius Mercantile. It lasted only until 1936. Catalogs from them are quite hard to find. This catalog seems to be from about 1932 based on the Beistle goods shown on one of the pages. The page showing the candy containers and horns show goods predominantly made in Japan. All in all a great catalog bought for a good price.
Vintage Art Deco Halloween Tin Litho Noisemaker Ratchet Bugle
The seller offered this great Bugle Toy tin litho ratchet for $19.90 via a BIN option. Bugle made some of the most out-there or avant-garde designs of all the major tin litho toy producers. Some of their imagery is wacky, while others, like this ratchet, are highly stylized. These typically trade in a band of $50-70.
BEISTLE "HEP CAT" HALLOWEEN DECORATION - MINT IN PACKAGE
Beginning in 2003, Beistle licensed a firm called Party Partners to issue reproductions of a limited number of their classic designs. Initially, these repros caused confusion in the marketplace. Although the packaging was clearly marked denoting the item as new, the actual items were not, so collectors had to rely on their knowledge of highlight colors, paper stock types and size to differentiate new from old. This association with Party Partners didn't last long. In 2012, Beistle decided to directly sell a line of their own classic designs. When I heard about their plans, I contacted Beistle to highlight the importance of altering their re-issues of their original designs in terms of size, colors, printed sides and paper stock - as well as the need to print the original and updated copyright dates directly onto these items so as to enable the secondary market to easily tell new from old. They found value in those suggestions and adopted them. Consequently, the market for vintage Beistle items remains one of the hottest collecting genres today.
