Bertoia Auction Results

Bertoia Auctions conducted their Fall Sale in mid-November. They had a very nice selection of vintage Halloween items, at least four of which sold through Morphy Auctions in September 2010. From the results, one could safely conclude the market has considerably strengthened over these eleven years.

Bertoia lots 1151, 1152, 1193 and 1194 sold in 2010 through Morphy for respectively $3,163; $1,610; $4,312 and $3,738. Here are the 2021 results without the 20% buyer’s premium realized for these lots in the same order: $10,000, $1,500, $15,000 and $11,000!

Another lot, 1148, was placed on the cover and realized an astounding $21,000 without the buyer’s premium.

Another lot, 1181, was a winking JOL candy container. It is only the second I’ve ever seen aside from the one in the collection. Even though it appears as if the nose of this lot may have been replaced, it still fetched $5,500 without buyer’s premium. When examining the photos there seems to be a color mismatch at the base of the nose and where the nose attaches to the face.

Morphy has an auction with a nice selection of vintage Halloween that will go under the hammer on December 2nd. Two of the items come from my collection and are designated as such.

1920s Vintage Halloween jack-o’-lantern Pumpkin Die Cut Ephemera NOT POSTCARD

These two items with fortunes on the verso are remnants from the Beistle fortune game shown on page 125.

11/23 Update: This lot sold for $38, quite a lot for remnants.

Evolution of Beistle's Party Sets

I recently acquired this Beistle enveloped party set, complete with all contents. In examining it closely, I realized that I may have gained an insight into the evolution of Beistle’s efforts to create party sets. Their first effort was no doubt for the 1918 season. That example is shown on page 217, upper left. The enveloped Complete Party Outfit shown on the same page at the upper right was attributed to 1922. I know now this is an error. (In reading the marketing verbiage more carefully in a copy of a 1921 Beistle catalog for retail shop owners, it clearly states that that enveloped set enjoyed great sales in the two previous seasons - 1919 and 1920. They continued to offer this set for the 1921 season, too. I have updated the book’s errata page.) I believe now that the enveloped set shown below was offered for the 1922 season only. It represents the earliest evidence of Beistle’s fairy motif mania that reached full bloom the following year. The set shown below, also shown in Campanelli’s great reference on page 112, has larger invitations, nut cups and fortune place cards than one sees starting with the 1923 effort. The 1922 iteration also included a fortune puzzle that was quickly dropped, not to be included in any party set going forward. Now, we all know that Beistle scored a home run with their party sets that first appeared in 1923. Their first iteration was a boxed set with slightly different verbiage from the sets much more commonly seen. That first iteration lasted for perhaps a month, and is truly rare. Once Beistle settled on the final cover verbiage and adopted what would become a smaller but standard sizing for the invitations, nut cups and fortune place cards, they pumped out significant quantities of the 1923 party set in three forms: boxed, enveloped and in the form of a booklet, which itself had two iterations - one with white pages and one with orange pages. Interesting, huh?

Rare 1935 German Halloween diecut Cat & Boys & Girls hand in hand against fence.

I’ve had several email exchanges with the wonderful seller of this rare German fence diecut. She saw the article in a recent issue of Antique Trader listing my ten favorite vintage Halloween items. One of them, this diecut fence design, I valued at $4,500. That estimated value prompted her to list the fence diecut she acquired ~30 years ago from an estate sale, wherein she and a business partner acquired a box of vintage Halloween items for pocket change. She told me that through a thrift or antique shop she used to run with that partner, all of the Halloween items acquired that day were long ago sold - except the fence. She listed the diecut on eBay with a “make an offer” feature. She said she received multiple offers in the $2,000 range (c’mon people!) and declined them all until someone stepped up and paid very close to my estimate in the Antique Trader. Although she received a market price for the rarity, nonetheless she was sad to see it packaged up and sent away to the savvy buyer. (I say savvy because when something this rare pops up, you pay up. Those offering a pittance for a treasure hoping to snag a bargain happily lost out.

Now, eBay’s increasingly opaque system shows the fence diecut selling for $1,000. Reading this post, you know now that is inaccurate. (I strongly dislike the opaque approach eBay takes to reporting actual selling prices. It is a true detriment to understanding the foibles of the secondary markets.)

This diecut is rare enough that I wasn’t able to locate one good enough for the collection until just 2-3 years ago. Know that these diecuts were shipped folded. The fold line is between the second and third figures. Although there aren’t too many complete examples extant, many of the ones I’ve seen have separated at this fold line. Many, too, are missing the left-most figure for some reason.