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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.

Vintage Beistle Squirrel and Owl Die-cut, Rare Foil Embossed Halloween, USA

Beistle made a set of twelve diecuts beginning in 1932 and continuing through the early 1950s. Each was made very early in the run with this unusual color variation, rather than the more common versions with their coloration heavily represented with green. These early iterations are hard to find. The seller, different from so many on Ebay these days, actually has a reasonable opening price, so this may be a good time to acquire one of this variants for your collection. 

Vintage Halloween Attic Find

I wish I would have seen this lot offered at the extremely low BIN price of $159. Kudos to the fast mover. The two shades intrigue me. They look like Whitney, but I haven't seen other shades manufactured by Whitney, so they are surely Gibson. 

"VINTAGE HALLOWEEN CREPE PAPER~OWL HOLDS SMILING JOL IN HIS CLAW~1930 DENNISON"

Crepe paper has been a hot sub-genre over the last few years. With designs like the one this fine seller offered, I can see why! One superb way to display crepe designs is to frame them. My good friends, Tammy and Barry, will have several eye-catching crepe paper designs framed and ready to sell at the American Folk Art Festival at the Madonna Estate Winery in Napa, CA on Saturday, September 6th from 10-3. There will be several people selling an assortment of vintage Halloween: Bobbie Lasky, Kimberlee Edgar, the aforementioned Tammy and Barry, as well as yours truly. (I have quite a lot of great vintage items I'll be selling, plus copies of my new book - so come on by!) 

Antique 1920-30s German Painted Paper Mache DEVIL Head Halloween Candy Container

This is one of the better known fantasy pieces out there. The poor seller, in his description, sounds so excited to have found FOUR ALL AT ONCE! The person who sold them to him was probably happy to unload them. These began appearing in about 1995 and have wormed their way into many, many collections. (I see it taking up space in a distressingly high percentage of collections to which I am lucky to have access.) I, myself was fooled. A holiday dealer in business back then was Jenny Tarrant. She sold me one then refused to refund my money. That was a valuable lesson on several levels. Deal only with sellers who will guarantee authenticity forever. In any event, this is a purely decorative item with zero collectible value. Don't be fooled. 

VINTAGE METAL HALLOWEEN TAMBOURINE - PAPER HEAD - BLACK CATS AND WITCH

This result didn't make sense to me until I looked at the bidding history. These typically trade for around $200. This tambourine would have ended around $175 if it hadn't been for one determined bidder who skyrocketed the price to the maximum the underbidder was prepared to pay in extremis! I don't see this as a sustainable price - but that is the joy of Ebay. It is a true crap shoot. The seller has to be completely delighted. 

Vintage Halloween 1920's Gibson Dancing Cat Centerpiece with Original Envelope

You know the season is upon us when great items like this pop up on Ebay. This Gibson interlocking table decoration was made in the later 1920s. Typically, these kinds of items are missing one or more of the "end hooks." This looks to be complete and in awesome condition. These typically trade for around $175. 

09/05 Update: It seems that this is the year for pre-1935 Beistle, Dennison and Gibson table decorations and diecuts. Prices have surged this season. This great centerpeice fence fetched $237.50. 

Very rare Halloween - Pumpkin head and the death playing with the devil

This is a cool item with an interesting concept, but it is not a vintage piece. The two heads are patterned after two of a set of eight well-known fantasy lanterns that were first imported from Germany in the 1990s. The Germans did not celebrate Halloween until relatively recently, so everything made from pre-WWI through the 1960s was made for export. Nothing was kept, so when a dealer tells you that something was found in a warehouse in what was East Germany, or some such tall tale, simply laugh in their face and scuttle away. 

RARE NOS Vintage German Die Cut Diecut Halloween Diadems in Orig. Bag Skull Cat

A faithful reader asked me to comment on this auction. These tiaras, or diadems, are rare enough that when several come up in one lot in near-mint condition, with an original envelope to boot, no matter how beat up it was, fireworks were going to be seen. There was MUCH chatter about this listing amongst my friends during its run, so the ending result doesn't surprise me. (Another reason for my lack of surprise is that I was the underbidder, at a hair under $3,000.) Although I didn't need any of them per se, I would have upgraded several in the collection and probably would have kept the tattered envelope. I have several diecuts that have the same notation of "Shadowlawn" on their reverse sides, so re-uniting them at this far remove of time would have been gratifying. Whether these are truly worth over $3,000 is open to question. A part of me was absolutely OK not being the prevailing bidder. (In my view, the star of the lot was the witch. I've been trying to upgrade mine for many years.)