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Do You Collect Old Lego? (wooden toys and metal cars)
bobabricks
Vancouver, BC, CanadaMember Posts: 1,840
I was just wondering if anybody here has or collects the old wooden Lego toys and metal/(I think plastic) cars. I would love to get my hands on some but I don't even know where to look and I'm guessing the price is pretty hefty. This is just a category nobody really goes near but if you have some please do share. :)
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Comments
Take a look here for many of them in one place ...
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=G&catString=645
You'll probably notice quite a few photos are taken in a museum.
here's a link to a wooden toy about $350 cheaper than BrickLink prices: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/LEGO-DENMARK-VINTAGE-1950S-WOOD-TRACTOR-RING-DRUM-VERY-RARE-ITEM-VERY-GOOD-COND-/201147902695?pt=UK_Construction_Toys_Kits&hash=item2ed5596ae7&_uhb=1
As for cost of these things, they are ungodly expensive. I've bought a few items from the seller @bobabricks is highlighting. Most of the time the price is just too high or there are too many people willing to pay much more than me. When I have won these auctions overall he's great guy to deal with and is super friendly. But you need to look at the photos very closely and ask questions, as he will gloss over problems.
But them I'm a fanatic of the toy type not the brand (lego just happen to be best at it!)
It's a bad word on here but I'm a massive fan of other building brick brands too! Despite what the uber traditionalists would have you believe the quality of some of the others is astonishingly good these days (many more astonishingly bad though which is why lego will remain the best)
I'll try to some photos this evening, but it maybe have to wait until Sunday. I need natural to take better photos and today is pretty overcast and then I'm a away till Sunday.
In the mean time if you're looking for better info and more photos than BrickLink try Miniland. They have a great section on wooden toys, early plastic toys, early bricks and lots of other information. The wooden and plastic toy pages are pretty image intensive and take a bit to load.
So your chances of accidentally throwing away old LEGO (with your Megablocks)... are slim, unless you live in one of the above countries.
Here is a sample of the over 100 images from my new collectors guide.... a 70 page Unofficial LEGO 1:43 Chevrolet Trucks & Wagons (1952-57). Some of these are also seen in the Miniland site... Danish LEGO collector Erik Rosenström gave me many of his images, which are also on Miniland.
I just finished my 1:43 guide (a PDF file about all things 1:43) back in April, and am selling it in Marketplace.
http://www.lgauge.org/
Well my wish was answered recently when one of the 4 car Train Sets came up for auction. One of the train cars had the roof removed... in order to fit in the box... but it was the box itself that really caught my eye....
1953 was the introduction of the "dog bone" logo... this had what looks like a dog bone or dumb bell running thru the logo. The dog bone logo was retired in 196.
In late 1952 the words "LEGO Mursten" ("LEGO Bricks" in Scandinavian languages)... was added to the Automatic Binding Bricks boxes printed artwork.
But earlier in 1952... it appears that TLG put the wooden toy logo decal onto the Automatic Binding Bricks boxes. When I first came across this, I was leery that it was put there at a later date. However a year later I found another example of this box type, with the same logo in the exact same angled position... so this is a very interesting variation among the ABB sets.
Wooden LEGO toys were mainly produced for the Danish market... although a few items were produced for Norway. No wooden toys were produced for Sweden however.
So first we have the animals.
I've also got a chick (which I don't know where the photo went) and a larger horse. The dogs and horse are fairly small, they fit on my hand. The duck is the largest of these. The duck was the hardest to get and I had to pay through the nose to get it. It still quacks.
So these are 18 and 36 piece blocks sets. The 18 piece set is rarer, but I think the 36 piece is more desirable. I've got a other version of the 36 piece set, but the photo is blurry so I'll have to try taking that one again.
The tractor was blurry, so I'll have to try that one again. And I was starting to run out of daylight on the train, so I only photoed the locomotive.
I don't have the hammer or pegs for the anvil. The second items is a "pinball" game. It comes with three metal ball-bearings. Pull the plunger down and shoot a ball into the game and where it lands is score for the round. The third item is a pull toy. It's missing it's long handle. The red oblong object rotates around as the wheels turn. It's hard to understand what it does with out seeing it work. And finally we have a musketer. It's toy flint lock pistol. I think this was Lego cashing in on the Davy Crockett crazy of the 50s. It was also one of the last fire arms toys Lego made.
The 1:43 Chevrolet Trucks were only sold in Denmark, Norway and Iceland (here's some images from my collectors guide). The wooden toys appear to have been just Denmark.
Opps, my bad... I see I had already posted some of the Chevrolet images... ;-)
The smaller, less known items are cheaper as the demand isn't there. The smaller animals could be had for $250-$500 US. The farm equipment varies lot. The plastic versions are better known and more desirable. A wood tractor sells for about half of what a plastic one would.
Well known items like the duck or block sets have a high demand and carry a premium no matter the condition. $500-$1,200 US is normal. There are 100s of variations of ducks. Ducks can be hand painted or stencil painted. They can have thin wheels, thick wheels, tapered wheels, or yo-yo wheels. Every type of logo from '32-'58. And they come in a rainbow of colors. My duck is from the late 30s or early 40s based on the logo, it is stencil painted and has thick wheels. Hand painted or ones with yo-yo wheels are the most desirable and carry the highest price tag.
Rare or really oddball items are harder to price. The musketer is the most expensive item I have. It's over $1,000. It would be worth more, but the logo is mostly gone.
$170 for a 36 block set sounds too cheap to me. The blocks look to be ok, as the finish looks to be mostly intact, but are clearly used. The box might be in really bad shape. I've seen some of these that are barely be held together. I've got one where the bottom can no longer support the weight of the 36 blocks. The paper on the lid is likely gone. But if you're looking to get a well known, high profile early Lego toy that's not a bad price.
As a result I've come across 1:87 scale elements. At first they were a bit of novelty to me. But I as got more they became more of an interest. The 1:87 scale vehicles came about because of the larger (1:43-1:35) scale plastic vehicles. The large scale plastic vehicle came about because of the wooden vehicles. And the wooden vehicles came about because of the other wooden toys.
Something to keep in mind is Lego stopped selling wooden toys in 1960 because of a fire early that year. Through out the 50's Lego sold wooden and plastic toys together. Many of the plastic toys had wooden accessories. So while the 30's and 40's were wooden and 60's were all plastic, the 50's was a decade long transition between the two.
In February of this year, I finished a 70 page collectors guide for the 1:43 scale LEGO trucks of 1952-57, which were only sold in Denmark, Norway and Iceland. As LusiferSam mentioned... TLG was gradually switching from wooden toys to plastic toys in the 1950s. Although the 1:43 scale Chevrolet Trucks and Wagons were made of plastic.... if any of them contained a tanker... that tanker portion was always made of wood. That gave us some of these interesting Danish and Norwegian models....
There are a couple of guys out of Germany I've bought stuff from. I don't remember either of their user names. It's been more than year since I last saw with one listing stuff. It's just a matter of searching and looking.
Sorry was done, came from link
I have a favor to ask. Would you be able to take pictures of the "classic" LEGO wooden Duck with a ruler? A few shots to get the general gist of dimensions and construction? I am getting in to woodworking and I think that the duck make a cool project to try and reproduce.
Also, any other info on the construction (materials, etc.) you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Big Mike
I have some issues with this. It's letting a genie of the bottle. As a collector of vintage Star Wars figures there's an on going issue of people innocently asking for detailed information on rare items. Somebody else then uses that information to mass produce reproductions. I'm not saying this is in any way you want to do, but once this kind of information is out there it's hard to control. So I'll need to think about this.