INTRODUCTION TO THE BLOG

Welcome to my blog.

I love tin toys! I don't know what it is but something about them makes me want to collect them. It may be the art, the colour, the ingenuity, the humour, I'm not sure. There's certainly a lot of nostalgia involved. If you've found your way to this blog it's likely that you feel the same way. You may be a seasoned collector or possibly just starting out, looking for advice. Whatever your 'level' I'm hoping to provide content that will keep you coming back.

As a collector and dealer in vintage tin toys I've often found myself searching the web and/or the literature for information on my latest acquisition. It's my impression that although there is a reasonable amount of information available it tends to be, widely dispersed, patchy in extent and rarely arranged systematically. It can take some time to find details of a toy, discover the history of a particular manufacturer or identify a trademark.

I've found that, because I have a less than perfect memory, it's been useful to keep a record of the information I turn up. In the past this has been restricted to my own use but the intention now is to transfer as much information as possible to this blog. At the same time I shall do my best to present it in a systematic form so that it can be accessed quickly and easily.

Inevitably, I produce a considerable number of photographs of the various toys I buy, sell and collect. The intention is that these will be recycled into a photographic gallery (Picassa / now Google+ web album) running alongside this blog. The plan is to use the gallery to illustrate the information in the blog by linking to photographs to show examples of, for example, manufacturers trademarks and so on. In addition, I hope that, over a period of time, the gallery will build into a useful source of information in its own right.

Finally, I've found that I also accumulate information from owning and handling vintage tin toys. It's a different kind of information, more specific in nature and not suited to inclusion in a blog. I'm thinking of details like e.g. number of cars included with a particular track toy, what a correct key looks like, variations in tin printing etc. It's occurred to me that this is potentially very useful information, particularly if you're a collector looking to buy online etc. I'll be incorporating as much of this type of detail, into the captions accompanying my photographs, as I can.

To summarise then, the blog, used in conjunction with the photo gallery, is intended as a central collection point for information on vintage tin plate toys. I certainly won't be producing anything encyclopaedic right away. Rather, I'm hoping that, using the advantages of the two formats (blog/photo gallery), I can make it grow organically, revising and refining as I go. Eventually, it's my aim, that it will form a really useful reference.

I hope that other collectors will find both blog and photo gallery useful!

NEXT POST - Index of Japanese tinplate toy manufacturers and their trademarks. HERE

IN PREPERATION - Index of British tinplate toy manufacturers and their trademarks.
IN PREPERATION - Index of European tinplate toy manufacturers and their trademarks.
IN PREPERATION - Low cost collecting - Kovap!

DON'T FORGET - You can access many of my current offerings, tin plate (and other vintage) toys actually for sale, via the link at the side of this page. These may be located on eBay or eCrater. Ecrater is an alternative online shopping site. It works in much the same way as eBay (and you can use Paypal) but the overheads are very much lower. You will find all my spares located there.

VINTAGE TIN TOYS ALWAYS WANTED!

Marx "Magic Crossroads (U.K. Version).