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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.

RARE 30's Original Beistle Vintage Halloween Lightning Wumpus Electricity Dragon

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.

Vintage German Halloween 1920's Large 37" Heavily Embossed Jointed Skeleton

Those industrious Germans produced jointed or articulated highly embossed skeleton diecuts in three sizes. The 27” version surfaces regularly. This seller auctioned one of these that brought $188.75. This 37” version is much less common - and the ending price reflects this fact. The largest one of all measures 50” and almost never comes up for sale. It would probably crest $1000.

Vintage Halloween DEVIL 30" jointed Die Cut ? Beistle Electric Man

Here's a great Beistle item you don't often see. This was issued for the 1931 season only and marketed as a Lightning Wumpus, one of four large jointed designs Beistle issued. They issued two in 1929 and two in 1931. (You can see them all on page 146.) This is one of their two best, the other being the scowling Skairo. This one appears to be in remarkable condition given how much can go wrong with this large item with its wholly irregular edges. SGV is $525. 

06/24 Update: This seems to be a slow time for quality listings - and when they do surface, the results, at least in this case, have to be disappointing. This stellar item sold for well below SGV. It brought $407. The buyer must be on cloud nine. 

1920's Rare Beistle Devil Diecut, Jointed

It is satisfying to see some real treasures amongst the dross that makes up this eBay category! I have seen this non-embossed diecut come available only a handful of times in my nearly 30 years of collecting. This diecut was produced by Beistle during the mid-1920s. There is a somewhat slightly more common variant Beistle produced without the tail, but I find it less interesting. The condition issues the seller conscientiously notes aren't concerning. If you appreciate iconic Beistle imagery, don't let this great piece slip by. I like the design so much I've included it in the Inner Sanctum section of the 3rd edition with a guide value of $325-375. 

09/05 Update: This sold for an astounding $922! Looking at the bidding history, there were at least 7 different bidders who pushed it beyond guide value, indicating that that value may be much too low. 

BEISTLE HALLOWEEN 1920'S MECHANICAL HORRIBLE WITCH DIE CUT~BAT WINGS~SCOWLING

I enjoy seeing these wonderful vintage Beistle items on Ebay. When Beistle manufactured and assembled these early mechanical items, they primarily used these primitive pot metal fasteners seen here. By 1929 they had moved to predominantly using grommets. There are exceptions to these general guidelines as manufacturing was much more free-form back then than it is today. This Horrible Witch mechanical diecut was made during the mid-1920s. 
Look at the Beistle JOL garland at the bottom of page 145. Another reference dates this as being manufactured several decades later, but the use of the early fasteners mitigates against that assertion.