Before Tim Frese left the Toy Doll & Super Show he had paid $175 for four toys, all made of metal, and each a reminder of childhood in different eras.
The most expensive was a bright red, boxy-looking car made by Louis Marx and Company in the 1950s. Frese, 35, sells antique toys and other items on the Internet, and he was among those who packed the Ramada Plaza Northglenn, for the annual show.
Joseph Svigel, 65, who sold him the toys, said he collects many things, including toys and automobiles.
The oldest toy on his table was a pressed steel replica of a electrical generator made in the 1890s by Hess Toys, a German toy company that went out of business in 1934.
Svigel turned a small crank on the toy, making a grinding wheel rotate, and a hammer rise and fall. His best selling toys are always “anything that moves mechanically because they’re more intriguing.”
Elsewhere, a “harmless pistol,” made around 1930, was lying on the yellowed box it was originally sold in. On the box, the manufacturer promised that the pistol and “vaccum tipped arrow (form) the basis for a social game for all ages.”
There were tables heavy with dolls, stacks of board games and comic books at the event.
Otis Simpson, 65, makes his living detecting harmful gas in mines and other places. He started collecting and selling toys and movie posters years ago after buying a metal bus for $20 that he quickly sold for $1,500.
He was hooked, he said. “You make that big score. You figure it’s easy, but it’s not easy,” he said.
He works the toy show, put on by Dana Cain events, every year.
These days, the most popular older toys are from the 1980s, Simpson said.
The generation that grew up in those years now has the money to collect them. “They want the toys they grew up with,” he said.
Sam Gallegos, 59, was selling a “Rube in a Tube, the Country Cousin to Jack in the Box,” for $100. Instead of Jack, a wild-haired replica of the toy maker’s idea of a country boy pops out of a cardboard cylinder.
The toy, from the late 1940s, or early 1950s, costs so much because it is rare, Gallegos said.
Many of the tables were crowded with newer items. There were collectible figures of Jedi warriors and other reminders of the slew of Star Wars films, princesses from Disney movies and Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.
Brooke Bryant, 19, who was browsing the booths, said her father has collected die-cast metal Hot Wheels cars for years, and has a large collection. “I was raised on toys,” she said of her decision to come to the show. “It’s a happy place, it’s not a negative place. Everyone here has a collection of some kind,” she said.
