This is a beautiful example of this hard-to-find German diecut. Many diecuts will come in three states: matte, glazed and matte with a faux-distressed look. (The last is restricted to relatively few designs.) I typically like the glazed versions best, but this matte devil face is very appealing. I hope it does very well for this fine seller.
04/11 Update: This brought $317.99.
Beistle released this suggestive devil design during the mid-1920s. They then released one without the tail, possibly due to feedback from their more prudish retailers, which is more commonly seen. The designs have never done much for me even though I generally appreciate the grimmer designs. The three-legged version and the more modest version both lack the charm of most of Beistle’s output at this time. I feel the designs lack inspiration. That said, this version typically brings strong dollars. Given the wealth of upscale listings from this fine seller, it’ll be informative to see if the number of listings impact the overall prices fetched.
07/24 Update: This sold for $555.
This is another surprising result. Up until about one year ago it was difficult to give these 1950s and 1960s foil decorations made by Happy Holiday away. Now, this pretty small market segment seems to have strengthened mightily. The seller has developed an excellent reputation within the collecting community for her pithy yet complete descriptions, many photos and quick shipping.
There are several things I find irritating about this listing. The first is its bare-bones description. I guess the seller could hardly be bothered with providing a detailed description. The second is the photographs. Where is a photo of the reverse side? eBay allows 12 photos. The third is the cutesy pricing. Starting it at $666 is just so trite. The fourth is the seller cribbed from this very site with no acknowledgement or thanks.
This seller should have just started this at $49.99 (or thereabouts) and let the auction run. Slapping an already fully-valued opening price for an item in rough condition is just a bad practice. Trust the system.
05/26 Update: The seller has listed and relisted this again and again, varying the opening price but largely keeping the BIN price of $750 intact, down from the original listing’s BIN price of $999. They would have been better off just listing it with a modest opening price. Sellers should emulate long-time sellers like zizsdream, who wisely starts the vast majority of her auctions at $9.99 and lets them run. A high percentage of the closing prices she fetches testify to the wisdom of this approach.
06/02 Update: This mercifully sold on May 28th for $100. If the seller had simply offered it in an auction format beginning at $9.99, it would surely have brought more.
OK, this result blew my mind. (Another from this set of at least six, with broomed witches, sold a day earlier for a hair over $1,700.) These are very cool and rare items, but c’mon. If any one buyer wishes to own four of the six satchels, shown on page 137 from my personal collection, they can be yours for $7,000.
A long-time collector kindly shared a previously unknown design from his private collection, folded to be used as a hat rather than a satchel - expanding the known designs from four to five. You’ll find this below.
Another collector kindly shared a previously unknown design from her private collection, folded to be used as a hat rather than a satchel - expanding the known designs from five to six. You’ll find this below.
This is an example of what I strongly dislike about sellers on eBay. They know just enough to mistakenly think that any piece of vintage Halloween, no matter how poor the condition, is worth a fortune. This seller is offering this not uncommon devil head lantern produced by Dolly Toy for a whopping $249. Just look at the condition. There are significant pieces missing and an irregular hole at the bottom. The seller claims there are creases on the corners but they are all intact. That’s not what their photos show. This item perhaps could be bought for parts for no more than $30-40.
Original diecuts of this design were single-sided. This appears to be double-sided, so would be a modern reproduction.
What a magnificent example of this hard-to-find diecut. Produced by Beistle during the 1920s, this jointed, grim-faced devil makes a real statement. (Freud would have had a field day chatting with the artist.) Beistle made another design that surfaces a bit more often that doesn’t have a tail. The condition issues this fine seller flags are true nits. This one is in better condition than the one I own. If you are a Beistle collector, you simply can’t let this one escape your grasp.
This was a surprising ending price. These German devil head diecuts are arguably among the most common. They surface regularly and typically sell for well below $200. So, not only were the bidders overly frenzied, but this is the time of the year when so many solid vintage Halloween items are listed that bargains are to be had. Why overpay? My contention is that NOW is the very best time to be a buyer. There are so many listings with collectors having only so many dollars to spend, that lots tend to go cheaper now than at any other time of the year. I have many items on my watch list and expect to buy several nice items for much less than one would expect to pay at other times of the year. Aberrant results like this one should lessen between now and middle of November.
These two diminutive German composition candy containers were originally sold as a set so it good to see them being listed at the same time. The ones in the collection can be seen on page 66.
09/22 Update: These brought strong prices: witch $511.05, devil $616.88.
There are a few high quality candy containers listed right now. This is a superior German composition candy container produced during the 1920s. Just look at that molding! The expression is captivating and the paint near-perfect. It’ll be instructive to see what this fetches.
The Germans were known to make subtle variations in their later diecuts. Notice how the teeth differ from the example shown on page 136. There are other variations as well. Can you spot them? This is arguably the most visually arresting design the Germans produced. I count this design amongst my very favorites. I’ve seldom seen a better example.
05/30 Update: This sold for $2,376.
Outside of the complete set I’ve owned since 1991, this is the first time I’ve seen this ashtray. (You can see the set on page 130.) I bought the set from a show in North Carolina in 1991. When I began to research what it was all about I found a book on “country store collectibles” that had the plate, humidor and match holder shown, but no ashtray. The photo’s caption said it was from the collection of Mary Lou Holt. I found a way to contact her to ask about the ashtray. Her initial response was that there wasn’t an ashtray. I offered to send a photo - and did so. Maybe a week later Mary Lou called to say how excited she was to now know there was an ashtray as part of the set. She told me that there were only ten plates made and speculated that there were only 10 ashtrays made since she had never seen one before. Mary Lou and I became friends. She was a great source of knowledge on many collectibles topics, including vintage Halloween. She passed away a number of years ago. I miss her still.
04/18 Update: This brought $201.50.
I’ve never been particularly attracted to lanterns, but this would be one that would have a place of some honor amongst any collection. As with retailers today spanning the spectrum from Dollar Tree to Nordstrom, back in the 1920s there were the dime stores at the low end where most holiday goods were sold and posh retailers at the high end selling such things as this lantern. The Durante proboscis, the add-on horns and those ears all differentiate this from the garden-variety lantern. The seller is a collector well-known for his vintage Christmas collection and expertise. It will be fun to see what this somewhat sizable lantern fetches.
04/09 Update: This brought $1,862.87.
I’ve received a number of inquiries as to my opinion of this item. I know the seller to be an ethical and affable person who has long been a collector of vintage Halloween memorabilia. I have much regard for him. That said, I don’t feel this lantern has much age to it. From what I understand, the Formalite process applied to items made from original F.N. Burt molds simply means a gesso-like coating over the typically used pulp, like shown in the second photo. I question why the bottom of the one up for auction is flat. If original molds were used, why wouldn’t the bottom be indented, like the one shown in the third photo? (Notice, too, that the lantern shown in the third photo is marked.) The lantern up for auction seems to be made from composition, not pulp. I suspect it was probably made off-shore sometime in the last 15 years.
My thanks to a long-time blog follower for supplying the second and third photos.
