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Collecting old toys – what to look out for

admin — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:19:41 +0000

Collecting old toys

Collecting old toys is great fun and if you search around at car boot sales or bricks and mortar auctions, there's always a good chance that you might find some old toys and if you're lucky, these toys might be worth money to collectors. So what should you look out for if you want to keep an eye out for old toys and aren't sure whether or not you should buy them?

Collecting old toys - what to look out for

Here are a few suggestions that should help you to distinguish old toys that might be worth some money from old toys that are best left well alone.

Is it an original toy or a later copy? Some collectable toys have been remade over the years and needless to say, the remakes are not worth much if anything to old toy collectors. Some examples that spring to mind are Stylophones - the Rolf Harris promoted pocket organ made by Dubreq in the 1970's. Original Stylophones with their original boxes and records intact are very collectable. However, these can be bought brand new in "lookalike" packaging but the new ones sell for around £10-15 and will not be of any interest to a collector. On the other hand, you might get £100 or more for a mint boxed original Stylophone with the original inserts, song sheet and record. An other example is Evil Knievel Ideal toys. The original 1970's toys are very valuable in good condition but some of these were also remade using the original moulds a couple of years ago. If you buy a remade one you could be making a costly mistake so make sure that any Evel Knievel Ideal toys that you see in the wild are original 1970's versions.
Check for original packaging. Most toys are worth a LOT more if they come in their original packaging and in many cases, the packaging effectively works out to be more valuable that the actual toy. This is because rare toy collectors are after original toys that are as near to "unplayed" in condition as is possible and that means boxed or in their original packaging. A good example here are model cars such as Dinky, Corgi or Matchbox. The rarer cars will always be collectable even if they're not boxed, but many editions are relatively common in unboxed and used condition, but could be very rare if in mint packaging. Action Man toys and outfits are also worth a lot more if they are in their original boxes or plastic blister packaging. People into Collecting old toys ideally look for toys described as MIB which means "Mint in Box". They are the most valuable vintage toys you can buy.
Is it a popular toy? Some old toys are best forgotten as they weren't very good in the first place and may not have found a place in the hearts of toy collectors. Other toys however will always conjure up childhood memories and therefore will always be in demand by toy collectors (subject to 1 and 2!) For example, toy trains and train sets are always popular, vintage Action Man and certain dolls are as well. Tinplate toys and model cars are also "classic toys" which will be sought after. However, there may be some other toys or games which were not so popular when issued which may not be popular even now so in other words, old doesn't automatically mean collectable. There were many football board/table type games which were rubbish (and still are), whereas Subbuteo, Striker and Super Striker were classics which will always be collectable. Collecting old toys for profit is about finding toys that other people want to buy. Collecting them for yourself is simply about finding the ones you remember and/or like!

We hope this has been a useful guide to collecting old toys and how to spot rare and collectable toys in the wild. Have a look around the site, we have brought together some truly dazzling rare toys for your perusal. Collecting old toys is great fun and can make you money as well!

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My favorite 1970s toys pt.1 – Super Striker

admin — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:58:40 +0000

Super Striker

I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some of my own memories of my favorite 1970s toys, seeing as that's what the site is all about - well not necessarily about 1970s toys but that's my focus for these articles because that's when I grew up.

As a child, like many, I was football mad. Therefore, it was inevitable that at some point in time, I was going to be asking Santa for a football game for christmas and when that time came around, it just so happened that the fantastic Super Striker was available and so that's the one I had to get!

Super Striker came with a hard backed folding felt pitch which was brilliant because you didn't have to faff about with a cloth pitch (like with Subbuteo) or, as most Subbuteo fans did, tack it to a big piece of chipboard! (I went on to love Subbuteo as well when I was a bit older so don't worry, I'm not knocking it!).

There were two fantastically exciting aspects to Super Striker. Firstly, you pressed their heads to make them kick. Whilst this wasn't exactly laser precision football, it was just about controllable enough to make it very exciting because you were "making your players kick". Any Super Striker player will know though that in the heat of an exciting match, it was all to easy to smack your player's head a bit too excitedly, thus breaking it and that, unfortunately was the biggest flaw with Super Striker. Now, I don't remember whether you could buy replacement players or replacement teams, but, unlike Subbuteo when you could buy almost any team in the world, for Super Striker you were stuck with your red team and your blue team (if I've got this wrong please feel free to correct me!) You could, however, buy accessories (as you could with Subbuteo) like floodlights, scoreboards and so on.

I particularly remember the year I was given Super Striker because, as kids tend to do on christmas morning, I used to wake up incredibly early exploding with excitement and on this particular year, I sneaked downstairs at something like 4am, found all my presents wrapped up in the living room, opened them all and then went back up to bed delighted. Needless to say my mum was furious that she had missed seeing me open them and I was in a lot of trouble. That never happened again!

As I was saying, the second super exciting thing about Super Striker was the "diving goalkeepers". The goalkeeper was on a sort of wand with a ball-type device attached to the goalkeeper which meant what when you rolled it along to either side, the keeper actually dived in that direction. Again, this probably sounds a bit lame when kids can now play state of the art football video games on their Xboxes but there was something magical about playing a "physical" as in non-computer football game like Super Striker. The diving goalkeepers were advertised as if they were pure scientific progress and you could buy a pair of diving goalkeepers to "upgrade" your striker setup if you wanted to get with the times!

I'm pretty sure that eventually, I was left with too few players to make a couple of teams up and eventually I moved on to the more sophisticated world of subbutteo, possibly the following year. I played that to death for several years, adding many teams, floodlights, stands, scoreboards and even TV cameras to my setup. Subbuteo was brilliant in that it really did take skill to play if you flicked to kick, though younger kids were more likely to scuff their finger behind their players and it had more to it than Super Striker. Having said that, Super Striker had a simplicity which added to its appeal.

Super Striker was made by Parker in the 1970s when it was in its heyday. It has been reissued over time so if you are buying a Super Striker set online (or offline), make sure you know whether you are buying an original vintage Super Striker set or a more recently made repro. Both should provide hours of fun, but you don't want to be paying over the odds for a repro thinking it's the same toy you played with when you were a child.

Here are some Super Striker sets and accessories for sale:

ADRENALYN XL ASHLEY YOUNG 11 12 MANCHESTER UNITED Super Striker PANINI 2011
$17.31
End Date: Saturday Jun-9-2012 8:21:38 PDT
Buy It Now for only: $17.31

Rare British Toys Dinky Corgi Action Man

Collecting old toys – what to look out for

Collecting old toys

Collecting old toys - what to look out for

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My favorite 1970s toys pt.1 – Super Striker

Super Striker

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Vintage Toys

Vintage Toys

What sort of vintage toys can you find for sale at Rare British toys?

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