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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.

Vintage 1920’s Halloween Tally Card Of A Well Suited JOL By The PF Volland Co

Volland didn’t produce a great deal of marked small paper but from that I’ve seen their design aesthetic projects serenity. Volland merged with Gerlach Barklow in 1924 and moved their operations to Joliet, Illinois. They were permanently out of business nine years later. I have seen a fair amount of unmarked small paper that uses a stock numbering convention starting with a capital T and followed by three numerals. This listing made a possible connection between items with this numbering convention that are unmarked and with Volland. I’ll keep this in mind when I see unmarked items with this numbering convention.

Vintage Fine A Quality October Angel Figurine with Halloween Pumpkin JOL Japan

Collectors ask me what market segments haven’t gone price bonkers yet. Admittedly, there are few that come to mind if one thinks of items produced before ~1965, but these porcelain Halloween angel figurines seem to fit the bill. They are fragile enough that surviving examples probably get fewer each year yet most can be picked up for $100 or less. They are not items that appeal to me particularly, but if I squint I can discern the charm from far away. Various Japanese manufacturers produced them during the late 1940s and through the later 1950s.

RARE Unused Vintage Halloween Place card Whitney 1920s - Original Packaging

I wonder if the buyer knew this is an incomplete set. The unmarked and unremarkable glassine envelope adds very little to the value, so the seller has to be thrilled with the selling price. (Although eBay shows the selling price to be $259.99, it was actually $200.) There are six cards to the complete set, produced by Whitney during the 1930s. The complete set can be seen on page 273.

Antique Gummed Embossed Foil Halloween Seals - Witch Jack O Lantern - Box of 5

These seals were produced by Hallmark during the mid-1920s. They came in boxes of 15 seals. (They may have been sold in boxes of different quantities, but the box I own is for 15 seals. The box is marked as being a Hall Brothers product.) The box in this listing doesn’t belong with the seals. Given the size of the seals, the box is much too big. Hallmark never had a factory in Attleboro.

Antique Vintage Halloween Dennison The Spook Meet Hallowe'en Party for Grown-ups

Dennison was routinely trying new things to promote their wares, one of the reasons they are still in business today. In 1929, some employee had the idea of targeting decorating ideas for specific types of events and promoting these ideas in an eight-panel fold-out brochure. There were at least three of these publications. I own examples of the first and third in the series. (You can see the third on page 107.) These come up rarely, probably because the print run was small and few kept it. I have only seen this a handful of times and the third in the series only once. The condition is less-than-ideal, but it may be worth picking up if you feel the price is right.

02/18 Update: This fetched $106.27, more than I would have predicted.

Auction 2025 Is Coming!

Hi Everyone,
I’ve been toiling away preparing for the March 2025 auction. I plan to begin sending out emails and otherwise publicizing the annual event on February 16th, so stay tuned.
If you haven’t received an email from me by February 20th, please contact me to ensure I have your most current email. (If you’d like to do that proactively, please do so.)
Best, MBL

Antique 1940s Halloween Party Invitation Black Cats Pumpkin Unused 4.5x 3” VTG

Whitney was an organization that seemingly didn’t prioritize organization. They manufactured boxes for both place cards and invitations designed to hold ten items plus their envelopes. The contents of any box, though, was a crapshoot. Like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, a buyer never knew what they were actually buying. Whitney would load each box with whatever was at hand. Sometimes all ten invitations would be identical, sometimes the box contained an assortment. The assortment would be truly that - sometimes there would be cats and sometimes witches. I’ve seen MANY complete boxes of Whitney place cards and invitations and seldom, if ever, were the contents consistent. What I have noticed is that their place cards and invitations featuring witches are far less common than the ones featuring cats. This penchant for running their business so loosely may have contributed to their demise. Whitney was toast by 1942.

MINT Unused Vintage Halloween Tally Cards Jack o' Lantern Rust Craft

Rust Craft produced some of the more innovative small paper designs. I’ve become an avid collector of their Halloween output. This tally is not often found in collectible condition. Can you guess why? If you said its slightly larger-than-average size and its very irregular borders - go to the head of the class!

Vintage Halloween 1920s Beistle Mechanical Jointed Bat

This is an astonishing result. This mechanical bat was produced by Beistle. It was sold in an envelope with a mechanical owl during the 1920s. (Beistle used at least two different colored envelopes. Some envelopes were tissue thin while others were of a medium-gauge card stock.) These bats typically bring about half of what this brought. I attribute it to the confluence of these factors: condition, the great photos, the clear description and the paucity of quality items on eBay right now.

Very Rare Antique Vintage Halloween 1930s Beistle Honeycomb Witch and Moon Hat

This exceedingly rare hat was produced by Beistle from 1933-1937. It is one of the four designs that comprise the full set of what Beistle called New Moon Hats. After all my years of collecting, I have found only three of the four. The one that’s missing is this very design, but the condition was too compromised for me to even consider acquiring it. Even with its condition and the time of the year, it did fetch an astounding $212.51.

Antique Vintage Halloween Plastic Cake Cupcake Decorations In Original Package

I found this listing interesting in that this packaged assortment of hard plastic toppers was offered by the Lone Toy Tree Company of Carmel, California. The firm wasn’t even incorporated until June of 1967, so they must have been simply a wholesale repackager of goods. These toppers were initially offered in the 1950s, long before the Lone Toy Tree Company was even in a glint in the milkman’s eye, to borrow a favorite phrase from Black Adder. The upshot is to be cautious with attributing products with a specific firm based on packaging alone.