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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.

Rare Find! Halloween Die-Cut Jointed Honeycomb Double-Sided Tango Witch

The market for vintage Beistle items in near-mint condition is hotter now than perhaps it has ever been. I would have never forecast (or even dreamed) that this iconic Beistle witch tango figure would have commanded the price it did. As with anything else, vintage Halloween items in the condition this piece was in bring multiples of guide value, a phenomenon well known in the comic collecting market with that same phenomenon now aggressively moving in to our fun hobby's market.  

Vintage Halloween Fibro Toy JOL man pulling cart slot & Tab Candy Container!

Out of the trio of slot and tab candy containers Fibro Toy manufactured, this is - hands down - the most difficult to locate. (The other two are the witch pulling a hay wagon and a black cat pulling a JOL wagon.) These were made in a span ranging from 1934 to 1953, but I suspect this design was made for a lesser number of years. Because there is no stamped mark underneath, we do know that this particular item was made later in the overall production run.  

Vintage Halloween Lanter Pumpkin Goblin Germany

This item is a fantasy piece manufactured no earlier than the mid-1990s. As the general collecting public caught on to how hot the vintage Halloween market was, manufacturers in Europe began cranking out these kinds of items. Many collectors were fooled then, and continue to be fooled today. Don't become yet another one taken in by these abominations.  

Vintage Owl Halloween Decoration Die Cut Cellophane eyes 13"x10" Made In U.S.A.

The seller made a mistake listing this with a BIN of $28.95, a mistake probably apparent as a scant 23 minutes elapsed between the time it was listed and some informed buyer snapped it up. This is - hands down - the rarest of the large diecuts Beistle issued with transparencies. It surfaces so rarely that I finally acquired one after nearly two decades of searching only 5 years ago. I feel the true value is closer to $275 than to $29. Kudos to the buyer! 

10/09 Update: Apparently the seller was made aware of this posting and reneged on the original sale, telling the original buyer, a good friend of mine, that she had let her sister handle the listing in error. This unscrupulous seller then went on to tell the buyer that her sister had subsequently sold the diecut to another person. Can you believe this? I encouraged the buyer to lodge a complaint with Ebay, advice that was followed. I know that I'll never deal with this jerk of a seller.  

Vintage Halloween Tales book by Ethel Owen 1928 Hallowe'en Tales

I have noticed that the prices for these hard-cover books that celebrate Halloween have been increasing fairly quickly this year, qualifying as a new genre of our fine hobby. This particular item seemed particularly nice given its bright coloration, its dust jacket and the strong cover imagery as well as the pleasing end papers. Still, given that the interior verbiage is mostly pablum, I am surprised that this is a developing trend. I am sure the sellers, good friends and long on my list of those with whom I prefer doing business, were pleasantly surprised by its ending price. 

1930's Silvered Halloween Die Cut - Two Black Cats Fighting on fence Moon Homes

Although Beistle issued the set of twelve diecuts, of which this design is one, from 1932 through the early 1950s in their typical green/red renditions, it manufactured these silvered versions for perhaps a single season in the early 1930s. As with nearly all such things, I suspect this silvered version was not popular so the run was immediately stopped. The upshot: these versions are harder to find and command a small premium to the ones with the typical color palette. (I have never been a fan of these silvered diecuts.)