Motorcycle Toys – Daryle Lambert's Antiques and Collectibles Blog – Tin is Best

 

Tin Motorcycle - Thanks to tintoyarcade.com

 

Motorcycles aren't my best friends ever since the time I almost got killed on one. Being silly, I hit a pile of sand in the middle of a country road and had to leap a ditch. Fortunately, there wasn't anything on the other side to impede me. If there had been a fence or tree, it would have turned my lights out permanently.

Since the last few blogs have been about motor vehicles, I thought it was time to explore the world of toy motorcycles. In the past, I have owned several toy bikes, as they are called, and found them to bring fairly good money in the marketplace. Once I purchased a cast iron Hubley for $50 and it brought nearly $500. Since that time I have had the cast iron and hard rubber bikes but never the Japanese tin ones. They have always brought between $200 and $500, which isn't bad considering I have never paid more than $100 for any of them.

I mentioned that most of the toy motorcycles that I have owned were either cast iron or rubber but never tin, and as fate would have it, the tin ones are the most expensive. I have never really figured out why Japanese toys bring so much money but it might be that their graphics are so outstanding. Just as a side bar, tin robots made in Japan have sold for several hundred thousand dollars. Can you imagine that? But back to the motorcycles. I have had many American Marx tin toys, just not a motorcycle.

Japanese tin toys were made both before and after the war. The production date doesn't seem to matter on these toys. They all bring excellent prices. To give you just a little flavor of prices, a Japanese Auto Bike Harley Davidson motorcycle from the fifties was priced at $8900 while one from the 40's with a side car was priced at $6500.

Tin motorcycles weren't only made in Japan but in Germany, France and America as well. The 1912 German Kico motorcycle is listed for $4500 and a 1930 American Hubley one was $600. There were many other companies producing these toys like Auburn, Kellerman and Champion. These little treasures appealed not only to children but to adults as well. Some of the wealthiest people in the world have the largest toy collections that can be found. Did you know that Malcolm Forbes may have had the largest lead soldier collection on earth?

Toys should be on the purchase list of every member of the Daryle Lambert's Antiques and Collectibles Club. They meet all the necessary elements for making money with collectibles, First, there are a lot of them and second, the collectors love them. Remember how I like to buy things smaller than a bread box? They qualify in that regard and you can often buy them cheaply, so what is not to like about them?

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