The most useful tool in vintage toy collecting is a magnifying glass pointed at the underside. That’s where a toy tells you where it came from and, often, roughly when. Since the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, goods imported into the United States have had to carry their country of origin, and makers stamped, printed and molded those words into toys that crossed the ocean.
Read them closely, because the wording changed with history.
The marks that date a toy
Japanese goods marked “Nippon,” the Japanese name for Japan, generally date from 1891 to 1921. Then there’s the occupation. From February 1947 to August 1949, Japanese exports were required to read “Made in Occupied Japan.” After that the rule relaxed, and until the occupation ended on April 28, 1952, makers could use “Occupied Japan,” “Made in Japan” or just “Japan.” So a toy marked “Made in Occupied Japan” sits in a window of about five years, which is a lovely thing to be able to say about a piece of painted tin!
German toys carry their own fingerprints. Steiff, founded in 1880, started putting a small metal button in the ear of its stuffed animals in 1904, specifically to separate the real ones from counterfeits. The earliest buttons carried an elephant. Later ones carried the name. That’s worth knowing when a “1900s Steiff” turns up with the wrong button, or none, because the stakes are real. A 1904 Steiff bear called Teddy Girl sold for $165,000 in 1994!
How tin toys were built, and how fakes aren’t
Tin toys are where reproductions do the most damage, so it helps to know how the originals were made. Spring-driven tin toys began in Germany in the 1850s. From the late 1880s, makers printed designs onto flat tinplate with offset lithography, then pressed the sheets into shape and joined them with small metal tabs pushed through slots and folded over. Ernst Paul Lehmann, the best-known German maker, reportedly exported 90 percent of what he made. Louis Marx and Company dominated American tin toys from the 1920s to the 1960s. After the Second World War, Japan took over, and by the end of the 1950s it was a major maker, which is why so many collectable tin robots have Japanese marks. Then plastic and new safety rules ended the tin era in the 1960s.
The details of that process are what reproductions get wrong. Collectors look at the printing (crisp lithography on the metal, not a printed sticker), the tabs (bent once, not glued), the wear (rubbed high points and edges, not even distress all over), and the proportions.
That last one matters more than you’d think. Take the Lilliput, a small Japanese tin robot collectors prize. The collector Justin Pinchot pointed out to Collectors Weekly that the original carries a fan-shaped “KT” logo and is marked made in Japan, while the common reproduction has a “Tin Tom Toy” logo, no Japan marking, and is slightly taller and wider. Simple to check with both in hand. He added that the repros “still fool many people.”
Die-cast, decay and the redline rule
Die-cast metal toys bring their own clue, and it’s a sad one. Many zinc alloy castings made from the 1920s through the 1950s suffer from “zinc pest,” a corrosion caused by lead impurities in the metal. It shows up as fine cracks, blisters and warping, and eventually the piece can crumble. High humidity speeds it along. The cure came in 1929, when the New Jersey Zinc Company developed Zamak alloys from 99.99 percent pure zinc, and pieces made after 1960 are usually considered safe.
Hot Wheels are the textbook case for dating by detail. Mattel launched the line on May 18, 1968, with sixteen cars (the “Sweet 16”), painted in a shimmering finish it called Spectraflame. Around 1972 to 1973, Spectraflame gave way to mostly solid enamel colors. And until 1977 the wheels had a thin red stripe on the tire, which is why collectors call that whole era “redlines.” Spectraflame has since come back on some special releases, so paint alone won’t settle it. The base, wheels and finish together will.
What we’d look for first
If we had one rule, it would be this. Find the maker’s own way of marking authenticity before you trust anything else, whether that’s a country mark, a logo, a button or a wheel. Makers put those details there for the same reason you’re looking for them.
What no mark can tell you is the part we like best, which is who played with it. A dent on a tin robot is a record of some kid’s afternoon in 1958. We’d take that over a perfect copy every time.
For more, see the strange and valuable world of Hot Wheels collectors, classic tin toys that live on, the Plastic Head series of nostalgic toy figures, and the story of Eddy Goldfarb, who invented over 800 toys.
