david_scrivener

Today's eBay purchases were: Farm toys: A kissing/wicket gate & fence unit in approx 40mm scale (model rail O guage) made by Kemlows circa 1953-60 and some Britains/Herald farm people bought from Mandy. The lot included one of the girl with bucket, plastic version (#813) of the previous lead item (#747). i already have 4 of these, but get more if I can reasonably cheap because when Jonathan Stephens eventually produces his 'study' of this item, I'm sure he'll be telling us there are at least two dozen colour/mould variations. Toys, but not farm: A Britains lead Confederate from their 2nd quality range and a lot of 4 plastic Britains 'Eyes Right' Scots Guards. Farm related, but not toys: A Poultry Club of Great Britain bronze medal (poultry show prize) in a case, probably 1930s.

These simpler and relatively newer farmyards, say post 1970, not a great deal, say £20 to £30, depending on size and condition, more if in original box. Values go up for older and better quality farmyards and individual farm buildings. Perhaps the two most collectable brands from the 1950s & '60s are Debtoy and Binbak, which can be in the £60 to £80 range. Then of course, there are the wooden farm buildings sold by Britains Ltd (but not actually made by them) 1959-62 (in 2 known batches, might be a 3rd), which seldom appear for sale, and are very expensive when they do, unless you're lucky enough to find one where other Britains collectors aren't looking. Pre-war toy farm buildings prices are very variable in value according to size, condition and quality, so impossible to give a sensible reply about them all. Generally, I think these old buildings are undervalued, considering their rarity, but value is a balance of supply and demand, so although supply is limited, so is demand. An extensive collection takes up a LOT of storage space (trust me on this ), so few collectors buy a lot of them, although I imagine a lot of collectors have a few farmyards etc to display their farm people/animals/horses & carts/ more toy like tractors (like Charbens & Crescent). it becomes pretty obvious which items are appropriate for which buildings, according to age and where they are in the toy-to-model spectrum.

Also Joytoys, a few years after tractorman314's farmyards.

I've just found a suitable looking house for sale on its own. eBay No: 390407213732

I don't know about this farmyard specifically, but there is another (slightly later) similar one on eBay at present. Item No: 140737771496

it was a long answer

Because information about these old buildings is indeed very hard to come by, I've become rather obsessive about filing every snippet I find. As the files get thicker, including print outs (because I'm an old fashioned guy, still very much with an ink on paper mentality) of Ebay and toy auctions, I gradually build up an idea of what buildings were in each range (by similarity of style), even though i don't know who made many of those ranges. For example, the buildings marked underneath 'Willow Series' and numbered, rather like the better known Hugar buildings. The highest number I have is #46, and I know what 9 of them are, and still don't have a clue who or where the manufacturers were. And this after many years of looking.

I've answered that in the other thread about this find in the figures & accessories section.

They were sold by ELC, but were made by Joy Toys & Woodcrafts at Upton-on-Severn, later at Malvern. This was a successor company (1969-1987) to the earlier ELF Toys (1955-1967) started by father & son, Fred and Ted Hall (who managed the production), Fred Elford (who managed sales & finance) and from 1960, Philip Hall (designer & Fred's half-brother). In 1967 Fred Elford (who financed the company from the start) retired and sold out, but Elf failed under the new owners, so Fred Hall and various relations started the new company. They got the contract to supply ELC because their previous supplier of similar wooden toys (farmyards, castles, western forts, dolls houses), Tiger Toys were unreliable, and eventually went bankrupt. (Today's toy history lesson was from a long article by 'The Toy Castle Expert', Allen Hickling)

I know sbout the Hill connection, but suspect they were made in Germany and bought in wholesale by JoHillCo and sold by them, or they bought the moulds. They might have been made by another German company called Noris, instead of Heyde.

Superb indeed! Lucky Sue. Made in Dresden, Germany, in the 1930s, by Georg Heyde methinks.

I hope she enjoys the Bookbarn when she visits, and perhaps find something from there on-line in the meantime.

The Elastolin horse is in excellent condition Mandy. None of the cracks so often seen on composition figures.

'The Sweet Lady' might also like to visit 'The Bookbarn', south of Bristol, postcode BS39 6EX (to find it on Google) See website: http://www.bookbarni...national.co.uk/ Most of their books are sold on line, with the books on open view at their 'barn' being clearance stock at £1 each - certainly 100,000s, perhaps a million+, just of clearance stock!. They also have computer terminals in-store to search for better books, which staff then go and get from the internet sales shelves (very high shelves, narrow passages, so not open to public).

We'll have to make a point of meeting next time, plus you can come and visit afterwards, as I live in Shepton, only 2 and a bit miles from the showground. PM me if you want my phone number.

Also just back from Shepton, with an unusual colour variant of the Britains lead Jersey Cow, more brown shades than the usual yellow/orange shades. Also a rather basic farmyard, which I'd guess was made during the war or just after, say 1945-55. I bought it, despite having more than enough 'basic' old farmyards already, because the house has a roof of hardboard with an impressed 'tiles' design (characteristic of Hugar buildings), and even more significant (to me, anyway) a window of the cellophane + mesh combination which, I'm told was only used by Hugh Gardener during the years he run his 'Hugar' factory at Epsom, and afterwards, when he continued in business by getting stuff made by other companies on a sub-contract basis, just using his old factory as a warehouse. This cellophane + mesh stuff was actually made during the war for London Transport (& elsewhere?) as anti bomb blast protection, and was stuck on the inside of windows of buses and those tube lines which run partly at ground level. Obviously Mr Gardener got hold of a few rolls of the stuff, & used it on his models for years afterwards. I'd love to get hold of a bit to do repairs on some of my old buildings. I also bought the 2nd edition (already had the 1st) of Peter Coles' book 'Suspended Animation, an unauthorised history of Herald & Britains plastic figures'.

Some people on the interwebz are going to SOOOOOO disappointed when this comes up on their Google search for 'Unusual Thai models'

Remember it hasn't really been 'Britains' since 1984, when the Britain family sold the company. I've been a Britains collector since I was a kid in the 1950s, but my loyalty ends for sure in 1984, and they didn't make much worth collecting in my opinion since the early 1970s.

'off-scale' items are perceived as a problem by present day adult collectors, but we should remember a few things: 1) They were TOYS for KIDS! 2) They had to keep items to a reasonably uniform range of prices. Very tiny items, although accurate to scale, probably wouldn't have sold well because they would have been perceived as poor value for money, likewise very large items (elephants!) would have been too expensive for many families if made to proper scale. Only Britains, well known for being 'upmarket' and more expensive than their competitors, made a proper 1/32 scale elephant, although the Timpo lead elephant with Howdah tiger hunting set (it really was a different world back then!) wasn't far behind size-wise. 3) Many manufacturers, especially JoHillCo, were manufacturing for several markets. Undersized (for 1/32) items might have been at least partly aimed at the toy train (O guage) and Dinky Car market (about 1/45). Over scaled items may well have been intended for the US market, where 70mm (about 1/25) 'Dimestore' figures became their norm by 1930. Some of JoHillCo's oversized zoo animals and the rare running paper boy from the railway set spring to mind. I've recently bought some of their 70mm WW1 soldiers, known to have been aimed at the US Dimestore market, and the paper boy looks just right with them.

When you have the time and inclination to do so, I'd like to see photos of both baskets. The Britains liliput basket is quite big for Liliput, would represent something like an old fashioned industrial laundry basket, and would indeed look about right as a picnic basket if used with 1/32 figures. JoHillCo, Timpo, Bassett-Lowke, and other companies all made various items of luggage for various scales of model/toy trains, including O guage (about 1/45), 1 guage (1/32) and US 'Standard Guage' (about 1/25, equiv to 70mm figures such as US Dimestore figures). Very few luggage items were marked with a company name, and so all difficult to identify.

Some nice Britains figures there Sue; the two Farmer's Gigs, Suffolk mare & foal, and 'furry hoof' cart horse. Your hen run netting is useful stuff. Where do you get it from? (a wool shop? craft shop?) Would I be correct in assuming you have a lot more figures in your collection than just these in the displays? (You might like to PM me the answer to that)

Good idea.

For the roof, you could consider dark grey or dark green, to represent the common colours of roofing felt used by most real life poultry keepers. Rustic wood brown would certainly be best for the walls.

Now you've got your hen house, you'll be needing some poultry worthy of it. The best made in plastic were the early (1950s) ones made by Britains/Herald. see them here: http://www.britainsheraldfarm.co.uk/ When there, click on 'History', and a new page pops up with the year each model was first made. 1955: ducks & geese, hen with chicks, duck with ducklings. Much nicer than the later versions in the 1970s & '80s. 1956: 'Farmer's Daughter' feeding poultry 1957: chickens & turkeys (including the only plastic turkey hen I know of) 1958: Angry Gander and Orpington type chickens (based on previous lead figures)

I just went to the toy fair, and bought some useful plastic figures from Adrian Little (who doesn't usually bring much plastic to the fairs): F.G.Taylor bull, harness horse, lying cow and Shetland Pony, plus 4 Britains plastic hen based on lead mould (Orpington type, for those who know their hen breeds) and 1 black plastic pig from the lead mould. I already have several, but this one was a late version with 'England' underneath, which I didn't have before. From another dealer I bought a plastic Crescent farmer with shotgun, in excellent condition with nearly complete paint (paint has flaked off decades ago on most Crescent figures). Got some other stuff as well, but the rest wasn't farm. Perhaps nicest, and only £5, was a lead Heyde parrot in large scale, one of their nick-nack, ornament range. Got a couple of their large scale dogs as well.