Stage 1What Vintage Toy Collecting Is

A toy is made to be used up. It is dropped, raced across floors, left out in the rain, taken apart to see how it works, and handed down to a younger cousin who finishes the job. That is what toys are for, and it is exactly why the ones that survive in good order are scarce.

Vintage toy collecting is the business of finding those survivors, understanding them, and keeping them for another generation. It covers a wider field than most hobbies. A lithographed tin clockwork car from Nuremberg, a die-cast Land Rover from Liverpool, a lathe-turned lacquered rattle from Channapatna, a 1960s Barbie, a carded 1978 Star Wars figure, a Hornby O gauge locomotive and a battered Monopoly set with all its houses are all vintage toys. They have almost nothing in common except that someone once played with them, and that someone else now wants them badly.

What "vintage" means

There is no fixed definition. In the trade, antique usually suggests something around a hundred years old or more, and vintage is used loosely for anything old enough to feel like a period piece, which in practice now reaches into the 1990s. Collectors also speak of pre-war and post-war toys, meaning before and after the Second World War, because the war stopped most toy production in Europe, Britain and America and the industry that restarted was a different one.

The label matters less than the three questions every collector learns to ask of any toy. What is it made of? Who made it, and when? And what state is it in, including its box?

Who this guide is for

It is written for four readers at once. The beginner who has found a box of childhood toys in a parent's loft, or bought one thing at a fair and wants to know what it is, should read the main text straight through. The practising collector will find the identification, grading and market detail gathered in the boxes marked For the Collector. The specialist will find those boxes a starting point and the further reading a way onward. And the general reader, who likes a good story, will find the sidebars worth the trip.

How the guide is organised

Part I is the hobby anywhere in the world. Stages 2 to 4 give the history and the materials, because material decides almost everything else: how a toy was made, how it can be dated, how it is faked, and how it decays. Stages 5 and 6 survey the main kinds of toy. Stages 7 to 10 are the working skills: identification, grading, restoration and fakes. Stage 11 is about buying, and Stage 12 about safety, because some old toys contain things nobody would put in a toy today.

Then comes the band on storage and preservation, three full stages long. It is the part of the guide most worth rereading, because old toys are made of materials that were never meant to last, and several of them destroy themselves, or each other, if kept badly.

Part II is the Indian story: a toy tradition that runs from Harappan terracotta to Channapatna lacquer, the festival toys of fairs and Navaratri displays, the tin and plastic toys of the licence era, and an industry now trying to reinvent itself.

Stage 2From Craft Toy to Factory Toy

Children have always had toys. Archaeologists have found wheeled animals, dolls, rattles and tops in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and some of the most charming come from the cities of the Indus civilisation, which Stage 16 describes. For most of history, though, toys were made by hand, locally, by carpenters, potters and turners who made toys alongside everything else.

The craft centres

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a few places in Europe had become known for toys in particular. Nuremberg in Bavaria was a trading hub for small wood and metal goods. In the Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains on the border of Saxony and Bohemia, villages such as Seiffen turned to wooden toys as mining declined, and Sonneberg in Thuringia became a centre for dolls and wooden toys. In the Val Gardena, in what is now northern Italy, carvers made simple jointed peg-wooden dolls by the thousand. These were cottage industries: whole families working at home for merchants who shipped the goods across Europe.

The industrial century

The nineteenth century mechanised the toy. Sheet steel coated with tin, cheap and easy to cut and bend, became the material of choice for moving toys, and German firms led the world. Märklin was founded in Göppingen in 1859, the Bing brothers built one of the largest toy businesses in Nuremberg, and Ernst Paul Lehmann's firm in Brandenburg, founded in 1881, became known for witty lithographed novelty toys. In France, Fernand Martin made small mechanical tin figures that sold in great numbers. In the United States, foundries turned out cast iron toys and mechanical money banks from the 1870s onward.

Britain came to mass-produced toys a little later but with lasting results. William Britain's firm began hollow-casting lead soldiers in 1893, which made them lighter and cheaper than solid figures. Frank Hornby patented his construction system in 1901 and sold it as Meccano from 1907, went on to make clockwork trains from 1920, and in 1934 gave the name Dinky Toys to a range of small die-cast vehicles.

War, and the world after it

The First World War cut off German exports and gave British and American makers their chance. The Second World War did far more: metal was needed for munitions, factories were turned over to war work, and toy production in most combatant countries shrank to almost nothing.

What emerged afterwards was a new industry. Japan rebuilt its export trade partly on tin toys, and from the late 1940s to the 1960s Japanese makers produced friction cars, clockwork animals and battery-operated robots and spacemen in huge numbers. Britain entered a golden age of die-cast: Dinky was joined by Lesney's Matchbox range in 1953 and by Corgi Toys in 1956. Plastics arrived in force. Mattel launched Barbie in 1959, Hasbro's G.I. Joe in 1964 gave the world the phrase action figure, and Mattel's Hot Wheels in 1968 shook the die-cast market with fast, low-friction wheels.

By the 1970s and 1980s, production was moving to Hong Kong and then mainland China, and toys increasingly followed films and television. Kenner's Star Wars figures from 1978 changed the scale and economics of licensed toys. Some famous old names did not survive the change: Meccano closed its Binns Road factory in Liverpool in 1979, which ended Dinky production there, and Lesney went into receivership in 1982.

When toys became collectables

Adults have collected old toys for a long time, but the hobby as it now exists grew up after the war, with collectors' clubs, specialist dealers and, eventually, auction houses holding sales devoted entirely to toys. Its engine is nostalgia with a lag. People tend to buy back their childhood once they have the money, typically in their forties and fifties, which is why demand for any particular decade's toys rises, peaks and then slowly fades as that generation ages.

Stage 3Materials and Eras: Wood, Tin Plate and Cast Iron

Material is the first thing to establish about any toy. It narrows the date, suggests the country, tells you what can go wrong, and warns you what kind of fake to look for. This stage takes the three oldest manufactured materials; Stage 4 takes the newer ones.

Wood

Wood is the oldest toy material and never went away. Old wooden toys were carved, turned on a lathe, or cut and joined, then painted, often over a thin white ground of chalk and glue called gesso. The Erzgebirge makers developed a clever technique called ring-turning, in which a ring of wood is turned on a lathe with the profile of an animal cut into its cross-section, then sliced like a loaf into dozens of identical animal blanks for carving and painting. Noah's arks full of such animals were a nineteenth-century staple. Rocking horses, pull-along animals, skittles, building blocks and dolls' houses make up much of the rest.

Age shows in honest ways: softened edges, paint worn through where hands held it, fine crazing in old paint, and shrinkage cracks that follow the grain. Newer pieces tend to show plywood, perfectly regular machine turning, and modern screws.

Tin plate

Tin plate is thin sheet steel with a coating of tin that resists rust. It was cheap, light, easy to stamp, cut and fold, and it took paint well, which made it ideal for toys that move. Early tin toys were hand-painted or japanned, coated in a lacquer that was then baked hard. From the late nineteenth century, printing designs onto flat sheets before they were cut, called lithography, allowed far more detail at lower cost, and most tin toys from about 1900 onward are lithographed.

Tin toys are usually assembled with tabs and slots: small tongues of metal pushed through slits and bent over, rather than solder or screws. Movement came from clockwork, a wound spring released through gears; from friction drive, a heavy flywheel set spinning by pushing the toy along the floor; and, after the war, from batteries driving small electric motors.

Cast iron

Cast iron toys were a largely American speciality from about the 1870s to the 1930s. Molten iron was poured into sand moulds, usually in two halves that were then joined with a rivet or bolt and painted. Horse-drawn fire engines, trains, cap pistols, and above all mechanical banks, in which a coin placed on a lever is flipped into a figure's mouth or a target, were the classic products. They are heavy, durable and, because they are simple to copy, among the most reproduced of all old toys, as Stage 10 explains.

Good old casting shows crisp detail, tight seams between the two halves, and joining hardware of the period, typically peened rivets or slotted screws. Worn paint on a genuine piece wears where hands and floors touched it, not evenly all over.

Lead and hollow-cast figures

Toy soldiers, farm animals and zoo sets were cast in lead alloy for well over a century. Solid figures came first; hollow-casting, in which molten metal is poured into a mould and the surplus tipped out to leave a thin shell, made them lighter and cheaper. Lead figures are fragile, since heads and bayonets snap, and they are toxic, which Stage 12 covers.

Stage 4Materials and Eras: Die-Cast, Celluloid, Plastics and Vinyl

The twentieth century brought materials that were cheaper, more detailed and more colourful than anything before. Several of them also carry chemistry that makes them unstable in the long run, which is why this stage and the storage band (Stages 13 to 15) should be read together.

Die-cast zinc alloy

Die-casting means forcing molten metal under pressure into a steel mould, called a die. It gives crisp detail and fast production. Most die-cast toys are made of a zinc alloy with small amounts of aluminium, magnesium and copper, known as Zamak, or in Britain Mazak. Early die-cast toys include the Tootsietoys of the Dowst Brothers in Chicago and, from 1934, Meccano's Dinky Toys.

Pre-war die-cast has a notorious weakness. If the zinc contained impurities, particularly lead, the metal slowly corrodes from within along the boundaries between its crystals. This is zinc pest, also called metal fatigue by collectors, and it makes the casting swell, crack and eventually crumble. Stage 13 explains why it cannot be stopped. Post-war alloys used purer zinc, and the problem became far rarer.

Celluloid

Celluloid, made from cellulose nitrate softened with camphor, was one of the first commercial plastics, developed in the United States in the 1870s. It could be moulded thin, tinted to look like skin, and was cheap, so it was widely used for dolls, rattles, small figures and novelty toys from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s. German makers such as Schildkröt, whose mark is a turtle, and Japanese factories between the wars produced a great deal of it.

Celluloid is fragile and dents easily. It is also highly flammable, and as it ages it breaks down and gives off acidic fumes that damage nearby objects. Both facts matter for storage and safety (see Stages 12 and 14). A faint smell of camphor, like mothballs, is a useful clue to identification.

Composition, Bakelite and hard plastics

Composition is a moulded mixture of sawdust or wood pulp with glue and other binders, painted and varnished. It was used for dolls' heads and bodies from the late nineteenth century until hard plastics replaced it after the Second World War. It crazes, meaning it develops a network of fine cracks, and lifts and flakes when humidity swings.

Bakelite, a hard phenol-formaldehyde resin patented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, and its relatives appear in toy radios, dominoes, board-game pieces and small figures. They are generally stable but brittle.

After the war, hard plastics such as polystyrene and cellulose acetate took over dolls, model kits, toy cars and figures. Polystyrene is rigid and can be brittle. Cellulose acetate can suffer vinegar syndrome: it slowly releases acetic acid, smells of vinegar, shrinks and warps.

Soft plastics and vinyl

Vinyl, properly plasticised polyvinyl chloride or PVC, is soft, flexible and cheap to mould. From the 1950s it became the material of fashion dolls, including Barbie from 1959, squeaky figures, doll heads with rooted hair, and later countless action figures and accessories. Its flexibility comes from added chemicals called plasticisers, and those do not stay put forever. Over decades they migrate to the surface, making figures sticky, and into neighbouring plastics, sometimes softening them. Stage 14 deals with this in detail.

Stage 5The Main Toy Types: Vehicles, Die-Cast Models and Trains

This stage and the next are a map of the main collecting fields, not a catalogue. Each field has its own specialist literature, which the further reading lists.

Tin vehicles and mechanical toys

Tin toys are the heart of antique toy collecting. The field divides roughly into three eras. Early German and French tin from before the First World War includes large hand-painted cars, boats and trains, and Lehmann's lithographed novelties. Interwar tin, mostly German and American, adds lithographed buses, fire engines and aeroplanes, and in Germany Schuco's clever clockwork cars and figures. Post-war Japanese tin, from the late 1940s to the 1960s, gave the world friction-drive American cars, battery-operated robots and space toys, now among the most valuable tin toys of all.

Early post-war Japanese toys for export often carried the mark Made in Occupied Japan, used during the Allied occupation from 1947 to 1952. That mark dates a toy neatly to a few years.

Die-cast

Die-cast is the largest collecting field by numbers. Dinky Toys from 1934 set the pattern of small, sturdy, affordable models of real vehicles. Matchbox, from Lesney Products in 1953, made models small enough to be sold in a box the size of a matchbox and numbered them in a series of 75. Corgi Toys, from 1956, added clear plastic windows, and later opening doors and film and television tie-ins. Hot Wheels, from Mattel in 1968, used thin axles and low-friction wheels to make fast cars for tracks. The earliest Hot Wheels, with a red stripe on the tyre and called Redlines by collectors, were made until about 1977 and are a speciality in themselves.

Die-cast collectors care intensely about variations: changes in wheel type, baseplate text, colour, window tint or decal during a model's production run. Two models that look identical to an outsider can differ several times over in value.

Model trains

Toy trains run from floor toys dragged on a string to precise scale models. Märklin introduced standard track gauges in the 1890s, which let children add to a railway year by year. In Britain, Hornby made O gauge trains from 1920, clockwork at first and electric later, and the smaller Hornby Dublo from 1938. In America, Lionel, founded in 1900, dominated electric trains.

The collector must learn two ideas. Gauge is the distance between the rails; scale is the size of the model relative to the real thing. They are related but not the same. Older trains are often tinplate and toy-like; later ones are plastic and increasingly realistic.

Stage 6The Main Toy Types: Dolls, Soft Toys, Action Figures and Board Games

Dolls

Doll collecting is a world of its own, with its own clubs, shows and vocabulary. Wooden dolls are the oldest. Bisque dolls, with heads of unglazed porcelain, were made in huge numbers in Germany and France from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s by firms such as Jumeau, Simon & Halbig, Kestner and Armand Marseille. Most carry a mould number and maker's mark incised on the back of the head, which is the first thing a doll collector reads.

Composition and celluloid dolls followed, then hard plastic in the late 1940s and 1950s, and vinyl from the 1950s onward, including the fashion doll. Barbie's early years are a deep specialism, and details such as the holes in the feet of the earliest dolls, made to fit a display stand, are used to date them.

Soft toys and teddy bears

The teddy bear appeared almost simultaneously in America and Germany in the first years of the twentieth century. Margarete Steiff's firm in Giengen became the most famous maker, and its button in the ear became a registered mark. Early bears are typically mohair plush stuffed with wood wool, called excelsior, with boot-button or glass eyes. Fabric and stuffing make them a favourite food of moths and carpet beetles, as Stage 14 explains.

Action figures

Hasbro's G.I. Joe of 1964, a twelve-inch posable soldier, was sold as an action figure so that boys would buy what was plainly a doll. The idea grew through Mego's superhero figures of the 1970s and exploded with Kenner's 3¾-inch Star Wars figures. Mattel's Masters of the Universe from 1982 and Hasbro's Transformers from 1984 followed.

Action-figure collecting is dominated by packaging. A figure still sealed on its original card, MOC, is a different object in market terms from the same figure loose, and details of the card, such as the number of figures pictured on the back, identify its date and printing.

Board games and puzzles

Board games combine card, paper, printing, wood or plastic pieces and dice, which makes them hard to find complete. Collectors look for the original box, board, pieces, dice, money and rules. Many classic games have long histories: snakes and ladders descends from the Indian game of moksha patam, and Ludo from pachisi, both discussed in Stage 16. Monopoly, sold by Parker Brothers from 1935 and in Britain by Waddingtons, grew out of an earlier game patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904 to show the evils of landlordism.

Board games are among the most affordable vintage toys, and among the most vulnerable to damp, silverfish and cockroaches, because they are mostly paper and glue.

Stage 7Identification: Maker's Marks, Boxes and Variations

Identifying a toy means answering who made it, when, where, and which version it is. The evidence lies on the toy, on its box, and in the makers' own catalogues. None of it is conclusive alone, and some of it is actively misleading.

Marks on the toy

Makers marked toys in several ways. Tin toys usually carry a printed mark as part of the lithography, often a small logo on the base or rear: Bing used the initials GBN for Gebrüder Bing Nürnberg, and Lehmann used EPL. Post-war Japanese makers typically used a small trademark, often initials in a circle, diamond or star, and learning these logos is a large part of Japanese tin collecting. Die-cast models usually have the maker's name and the model's name cast into the baseplate. Bisque dolls have incised mould numbers and initials on the back of the head. Cast iron toys are often unmarked, which is one reason reproductions flourish.

Marks of country

Country-of-origin marks are among the most useful dating clues. After the United States required imported goods to be marked with their country of origin in the 1890s, "Germany" and later "Made in Germany" began to appear on toys exported there. Other marks pin a date more tightly:

• Made in Occupied Japan: the Allied occupation, roughly 1947–1952.
• Made in US Zone Germany: the American zone of occupied Germany in the late 1940s.
• Made in Western Germany or W. Germany: West Germany, from 1949 until reunification in 1990.
• Made in Hong Kong, then Made in China or Macau: the drift of production from the 1960s onward.

Dates that are not dates

The commonest identification mistake is reading a date on a toy as the date it was made. A patent date tells you only the earliest a toy could have been made. A copyright date moulded into a plastic doll or figure usually records when the design was first registered, and the same mould can carry the same date for decades. Many Barbie dolls made long after 1959 carry an early copyright date on the body. The date is a floor, never a birth certificate.

Boxes as evidence

Boxes are documents. The printing style, typefaces, colour scheme, catalogue number, the maker's address, price markings, and any importer's or retailer's label all changed over time and can date a toy more tightly than the toy itself. A well-known model may have been sold in several box types over its life, and collectors of die-cast refer to them by name or by the order in which they appeared. A toy in the "wrong" box for its variation is a warning sign, as Stage 10 explains.

Variations

A variation is a difference introduced during a toy's production run: a new wheel type, a changed baseplate text, a different colour or tint of window, a new decal, or an altered casting. Makers did not produce variations to please collectors; they changed suppliers, fixed tools, used up stock and cut costs. Variations matter because some were made in small numbers and are much scarcer than the standard version. A short run of an unusual colour can be worth many times the common colour of the same model.

Makers' trade catalogues, the annual illustrated booklets sold or given to shops and customers, are the backbone of identification. Original catalogues are collectable in their own right, and reprints and scans circulate among collectors' clubs.

Stage 8Condition Grading and the Price of the Box

Condition is the largest single factor in a toy's price after rarity, and for common toys it outweighs rarity entirely. Grading is the language for describing it, and the box is graded separately from what is inside it.

The scales

There is no universal standard, but two systems dominate. Word grades run from Mint through Near Mint, Excellent, Very Good and Good down to Fair and Poor. The C-scale, widely used by toy auction houses and dealers, runs from C1 (poor) to C10 (mint), sometimes in half steps. For sealed action figures and a few other categories, grading companies such as the Action Figure Authority in the United States assess the item and seal it in a clear case with a numerical grade out of 100.

What each grader looks for is broadly the same: paint (chips, rubs, fading, retouching), metal (rust, zinc pest, bends), completeness (every part, accessory and decal), function (does the mechanism work), and originality (no replaced parts or repaint).

Why the box is worth so much

A boxed toy can be worth several times the same toy unboxed, and for sought-after models in fine boxes the multiple can run to ten or more. There are four reasons. Most boxes were thrown away within days, so they are scarcer than the toys. A box protects the toy, so a toy found in its box is more likely to be in fine condition. The box documents the variation and date (see Stage 7). And collectors simply like the complete object as it was sold.

The box also degrades on its own terms. Graders look for crushed corners, torn or missing end flaps, tape repairs, price stickers and the marks left by their removal, writing, water stains, sun fading, particularly on the spine or the side that faced a shop window, and the presence of any inner card or packing piece. A box that has lost its inner packing is described as incomplete.

Sealed and slabbed

Grading carded figures and sealing them in cases has fierce advocates and critics. For: a trusted third-party grade supports a price and protects a fragile card. Against: once sealed, the item cannot be examined; clear cases can scratch; and the grade is one company's opinion at one moment. Whatever you think of grading, check that any case you buy is intact, and remember that a case does not protect against heat, light or plasticiser migration.

Stage 9Restoration, Repaint and Honest Repair

Every collector eventually owns a damaged toy and wonders whether to fix it. The answer depends on the toy, the damage and the purpose, but a few principles hold across the whole hobby.

Five different things

• Cleaning removes dirt without removing original material.
• Conservation stabilises a toy and slows its decay, using methods that can be reversed, and changes the appearance as little as possible.
• Repair fixes a fault, such as a broken spring, a snapped tab or a loose joint.
• Restoration returns a toy towards its original appearance, often by adding new material: replacement parts, touched-up paint, new decals.
• Repaint removes or covers the original finish and replaces it.

The market treats these very differently. For most collectable toys, original finish in worn condition is worth more than a restoration, and a full repaint is often worth a small fraction of an original example in similar-looking condition. The exception is common, heavily damaged toys, where restoration may be the only way to make something presentable. Even then, it must be disclosed.

Principles worth following

Do nothing you cannot undo. Drilling out die-cast rivets to take a model apart, stripping paint, and gluing with strong adhesives are all permanent. Replacing a missing tyre with a reproduction, keeping the original parts in a labelled bag, is reversible.

Keep every original part. A broken original spring, a torn decal, a split tyre: bag them, label them and keep them with the toy.

Disclose everything. A restoration honestly described is a legitimate object. The same restoration sold as original is a fraud, and restored toys often change hands several times, losing their history on the way.

Mechanisms and routine repairs

Some work is accepted as maintenance rather than restoration. Restringing an old doll with fresh elastic, cleaning dried grease from a clockwork motor, and replacing a perished rubber drive band are generally regarded as care, provided they are done neatly and recorded. Replacing a spring or a gear with a new one is repair, and should be noted.

Mechanisms deserve patience. A clockwork motor that will not run is usually gummed with old oil or jammed rather than broken. Forcing the key strips gears. A good toy repairer or clock repairer can clean and adjust a mechanism far more safely than an enthusiastic owner with a screwdriver.

Stage 10Reproductions, Fakes and Married Pieces

Where money flows, copies follow. Toy collecting has every kind: honest reproductions sold as decoration, reissues by the original makers, and deliberate fakes made to deceive. The useful rule, taken from Stage 6, is that the smaller and simpler the thing that makes a toy valuable, the more likely someone has faked it.

The kinds of copy

Reproductions are new objects made to look like old ones. Many were sold honestly, as decorative pieces or nostalgia gifts, and only became a problem when later sellers passed them off as original. Cast iron banks and vehicles, tin toys and bisque doll heads have all been reproduced in large numbers.

Reissues are toys made again by the original maker or a licensee, sometimes from the original designs. Several makers have reissued their own classic toys, usually with a mark or packaging that identifies them as reissues. Once separated from the packaging, some are easy to mistake for originals.

Fakes are made to deceive, and include:

• Recasts: a copy cast in a mould taken from an original toy.
• Upgrades: a genuine common toy altered to look like a rare variation, by changing colour, wheels or parts.
• Married pieces: a genuine toy put together with a genuine box, parts or accessories from a different example. A married toy may be entirely old and still misrepresented.
• Reseals: a carded figure opened and resealed onto its card, or a loose figure placed on a card with a new bubble.
• Fantasy pieces: toys that never existed in the form offered, such as an invented colour or an unofficial "prototype".

Reading the clues

Size. Metal shrinks as it cools, and porcelain shrinks as it is fired. A copy made in a mould taken from an original is therefore smaller than the original: slightly, often by around one or two per cent, for cast metal, and noticeably more for a reproduction bisque doll head. Measuring a suspect piece against a known original, or against published dimensions, is one of the most reliable tests for cast iron, lead and bisque.

Surface. Recasts tend to have softer detail and a grainy surface, and the two halves of a cast toy often fit poorly. Artificial ageing produces rust and wear that are too even, or in places a child's hands would never reach.

Hardware. Modern cross-head screws, bright new rivets or rivets that have been drilled and replaced suggest a toy has been apart.

Printing. Under a magnifying loupe, old lithography shows solid colour or a regular screen of dots. Modern digital printing on reproduction tin or boxes often shows a different, finer or irregular dot pattern. New card is often brighter white and may glow blue under ultraviolet light, because modern paper often contains optical brighteners.

Fit and logic. A rare colour on a common box, a box type from the wrong year, or accessories from a later issue are all warnings.

Stage 11Buying Well and Building a Collection

Where toys are sold

Toy fairs and swapmeets gather many dealers in one hall and let you handle stock. Specialist dealers charge more but usually know their material and stand behind it. Auction houses range from general salerooms, where toys appear among furniture and pictures, to specialist toy auctioneers such as Vectis in Britain and Bertoia and Morphy in the United States, whose catalogues and archives of results are also a research tool. Online marketplaces have the largest range and the widest variation in honesty. Flea markets, house clearances and estate sales are where discoveries still happen, among a great deal of junk.

How to buy safely

Ask for what photographs hide. Ask for pictures of the base, all box sides and the ends, any marks, and any damage. Ask whether the mechanism works, and for a short video if it matters. Ask whether any parts are replaced or repainted, and whether the toy smells of camphor, vinegar or chemicals, which suggests celluloid or plastics in decline. For die-cast, ask specifically about cracks, bubbling or crumbling, the signs of zinc pest.

Know the full cost before bidding. At auction the hammer price is only the start: a buyer's premium, often a fifth or more of the hammer price, is added, then taxes, packing and postage. Buying from abroad into India brings customs duty and GST on top, which on toys can be substantial; ask a customs broker or the courier what applies before you bid, not after. Old batteries must be removed before shipping, and some couriers restrict items containing them.

Price guides and real prices

Printed price guides are useful for identification and rough ranking but date quickly and often reflect asking prices. The best evidence of value is recent realised prices: what a comparable toy in comparable condition actually sold for, including premium. Remember the spread: what you pay a dealer and what a dealer will pay you are different numbers, often far apart.

From beginner to specialist

The path most collectors follow is from a broad accumulation, to a defined field, to a specialism within it. A few habits speed it up. Buy the book before the toy: a good reference work costs less than one mistake. Buy the best condition you can afford, since one fine example usually holds value better than five poor ones, while keeping a few cheap study pieces to learn from. Join a club, because members' knowledge is deeper than any listing. And record everything from the first day, as Stage 15 describes.

Stage 12Safety with Old Toys

Old toys were made before modern safety standards, and some contain materials that are harmful. Most risks are easily managed with sense and a few habits. None of this is a reason to avoid the hobby; all of it is a reason not to hand an old toy to a small child.

Lead

Lead paint was widely used on toys for much of the twentieth century and earlier, and many countries restricted it only from the middle decades of the century onward. Lead figures, such as toy soldiers and farm animals, are themselves made of lead alloy. Lead is toxic, especially to children and during pregnancy, and it enters the body mainly by swallowing dust or flakes.

• Do not give old painted toys or lead figures to children to play with.
• Wash your hands after handling them, and before eating.
• Never sand, scrape, file or heat old paint or lead.
• Clean up paint flakes with a damp disposable cloth, not a vacuum cleaner without a fine filter.

Sharp tin edges and rust

Tin toys have folded edges and tabs, and broken or rusted ones are sharp. Handle unfamiliar tin toys slowly and support them from underneath. A cut from rusty metal should be washed thoroughly; see a doctor for a deep or dirty wound, and keep your tetanus vaccination up to date.

Old batteries

Batteries left in toys for years leak. Common alkaline batteries release a caustic potassium hydroxide residue, which appears as white crusty deposits, and corrosion spreads along contacts and wires. Wear disposable gloves and eye protection when removing old batteries, work in a ventilated place, put them in a sealed bag, and take them to a battery recycling point. Do not simply put fresh batteries into an old toy: check the contacts and wiring first, or have it checked. Remove batteries from every toy before storing it (see Stage 13).

Mains electricity

Old train transformers, toy cookers, projectors and lamps may have perished insulation and no modern protection. Do not plug in an old mains-powered toy until a qualified electrician has checked it.

Celluloid and fire

Celluloid ignites easily and burns fiercely. Keep celluloid toys away from heat sources, lamps, direct sun and naked flames, and store them as Stage 14 describes.

Asbestos, stated carefully

Asbestos was used in some very old toys and play materials, in some cases for insulation and in others for decoration. Examples include some early electric toy cookers and irons, the heat mats included in some old chemistry sets, and the artificial snow used in some early twentieth-century decorations. It is not common in toys, and it cannot be identified by looking.

Asbestos is mainly dangerous when its fibres are released into the air by breaking, sanding, crumbling or brushing. If you suspect it, do not disturb the material. Do not clean it, cut it or try to test it yourself. Place the object gently in a sealed polythene bag, label it, and ask for advice from a licensed asbestos surveyor or an accredited testing laboratory.

Storage and Preservation

Stage 13Storage and Preservation: The Enemies, and Metal Toys

Old toys are harder to keep than most collectables. A stamp is paper and ink; a coin is metal. A single toy can be tin plate, rubber, celluloid, card, paint and a steel spring at once, and each part wants different conditions. Worse, several of the materials in old toys decay in ways that damage their neighbours, and a few carry the seeds of their own destruction in their chemistry. This band takes the problem in three stages: the enemies and the metal toys here, the plastics, wood, fabric and card in Stage 14, and the practice of storage, display and records in Indian homes in Stage 15.

The enemies, and how each one works

Light and ultraviolet. Light carries energy that breaks chemical bonds. Visible light fades dyes, printing inks and lithography; ultraviolet, invisible and more energetic, does the same faster and also yellows and embrittles plastics, fabric and card. Fading is cumulative and irreversible: a box spine that faced a window for five years has spent that colour forever.

Relative humidity. Relative humidity, RH, is how much water vapour the air holds compared with the most it could hold at that temperature. High RH drives rust on steel and iron, speeds zinc pest in early die-cast, feeds mould on card, fabric and glue, and softens composition. Low RH shrinks and cracks wood, lacquer and paint. Wood, card, composition and textiles take up and release moisture, swelling and shrinking as they do.

Temperature, and above all temperature swings. Heat speeds almost every chemical decay; a common conservation rule of thumb is that the rate of many reactions roughly doubles for each 10 °C rise. Heat also drives plasticisers out of vinyl and softens lac. Swings are worse than steady warmth: materials expand and contract at different rates, so paint lifts from tin and lacquer cracks on wood, and a cold object brought into warm humid air collects condensation on its surface.

Pests. Termites and wood-boring beetles attack wooden toys and cabinets. Silverfish and cockroaches graze on card, paper, glue and printed surfaces. Clothes moths and carpet beetles eat wool, felt, mohair, silk and hair. Rodents shred card and fabric for nests.

Mould. Mould spores are everywhere and germinate on organic materials when RH stays above roughly 65–70% for days. It stains card and fabric permanently and weakens them.

Pollution and salt air. Sulphur and nitrogen compounds from traffic and industry, and salt carried inland from the sea, speed corrosion of metals.

Acids and off-gassing. Some materials give off vapours that damage others: ordinary card and wood, especially oak; decaying celluloid and cellulose acetate; soft PVC; some paints and adhesives. In a closed cupboard those vapours concentrate.

Dust. Dust is abrasive, holds moisture against surfaces, and feeds insects.

Handling. Skin leaves salts and oils that etch fingerprints into tin and die-cast, and every lift risks a drop.

Well-meant fixes. Metal polish, oil, household cleaner, tape, glue and a quick repaint have destroyed more value than neglect.

Tin plate: rust and paint loss

Tin plate resists rust only as long as its tin coating is unbroken. The coating is breached at every cut edge, tab, slot, scratch and dent, and there the steel beneath starts to rust. Rust takes up more space than the steel it came from, and it holds moisture, so it creeps sideways under the lithography and pushes it up. That is how tin toys lose paint: first a brown bloom at a seam, then a blister, then a flake gone.

Inside surfaces are usually unprinted and rust first, unseen. Paint and lithography also fail on their own when temperature swings flex the metal beneath them.

What to do. Keep tin toys dry, ideally around 35–45% RH, and steady. Avoid condensation: do not carry a toy from an air-conditioned room straight into a humid veranda and back. Dust with a soft dry brush. Handle with clean hands or nitrile gloves. Do not oil the outside, polish it, or treat rust with converters and removers. Wax coatings are sometimes used by conservators; applying them over flaking lithography at home traps dirt and lifts paint.

Die-cast: zinc pest, and why it cannot be stopped

Zinc pest, also called zinc-alloy rot or, among collectors, metal fatigue, attacks die-cast toys made from zinc alloy that was not pure enough. It mostly affects castings from the 1930s and 1940s, before the industry controlled impurities strictly, although it turns up in some later pieces too.

The mechanism is internal. Die-cast metal is made of tiny crystals, or grains. Where impurities such as lead collect along the boundaries between grains, moisture from the air slowly corrodes the metal along those boundaries, deep inside the casting. The corrosion products take up more room than the metal, so the casting swells from within. The first sign is often fine crazing or bubbling of the paint, then warping, bent axles, and hairline cracks. Eventually the casting splits and crumbles.

It cannot be stopped once it has started, for three reasons. The weakness is in the composition of the metal throughout, not on its surface, so no coating or treatment can reach it. By the time cracks show, the corrosion has been working inside the metal for years. And a damaged casting cannot be un-swollen: straightening a warped piece breaks it. What you can do is slow it, by keeping the toy dry and stable, and not hasten the end, by never flexing, straightening or pressing it.

Zinc pest is not contagious. It does not spread from one model to another, although crumbling fragments can scratch neighbours, so give an affected piece its own padded box.

Cast iron and lead

Cast iron is sturdy and simply rusts in damp. Keep it dry, dust it, and resist rust removers and repainting.

Lead figures suffer a special problem. Vapours of organic acids, chiefly acetic and formic acid, given off by oak and some other woods, some plywood and fibreboard adhesives, fresh paints and poor-quality card, attack lead and form a white, powdery crust. It spreads and eats away detail. Collections of toy soldiers kept for years in wooden cabinets or old card boxes are especially prone. Store lead figures in inert plastic boxes or powder-coated steel cabinets, never in oak, and wash your hands after handling (see Stage 12).

Clockwork, friction motors and batteries

Store clockwork unwound. A spring left under tension for years takes a set, weakens and may break. Let the motor run down fully before storing. Old lubricants dry into a gum that holds dust; a mechanism that is stiff should be serviced by a repairer rather than flooded with oil, which runs onto paint and card. Rubber drive bands in friction and belt-driven toys perish in time; keep any original in a labelled bag if it is replaced.

Take every battery out. No exception, even for a toy you intend to run next week. A leaking cell can destroy a mechanism and its wiring in a single season. Put a small label in the bag saying which size the toy takes.

Stage 14Preservation of Plastics, Rubber, Celluloid, Wood, Textiles and Card

The newer materials in toys fail in quieter ways than rusting tin, and several of them harm whatever they touch. Conservators sometimes call four of them the malignant plastics: cellulose nitrate (celluloid), cellulose acetate, plasticised PVC and polyurethane foam. Old natural rubber behaves almost as badly. Knowing which is which, and keeping them apart, is most of the battle.

Soft PVC and vinyl: sticky figures and plasticiser migration

Soft vinyl is rigid PVC made flexible by plasticisers, oily chemicals that sit between the long chains of the polymer and let them slide. They are not bound in place. Over years, and much faster in heat, they migrate to the surface. The toy becomes tacky, dust sticks to it, and eventually beads of oily liquid appear. As plasticiser leaves, the vinyl beneath hardens, shrinks and may crack. Later still, the PVC itself can break down and give off hydrogen chloride, an acid gas.

Wiping a sticky figure removes only what has already come out; more will follow, and solvents can make matters worse. Cleaning a badly affected figure is a conservator's decision.

Discolouration comes from several sources. Light and heat yellow and brown many plastics. Dyes can migrate from one part to another, so a coloured costume may stain a pale face. And metal touching vinyl can leave a stain: early fashion dolls with brass or copper earrings often developed a green mark in the ear, known to collectors as green ear. Collectors often store such earrings separately, bagged and labelled with the doll.

"Melting" between incompatible plastics. Plasticiser does not only reach the surface; it moves into whatever touches it. Where a soft vinyl figure rests against a hard polystyrene vehicle, a painted surface, another figure or the clear window of a box, the neighbour can soften, craze, go cloudy or seem to melt, and the two can fuse. Soft vinyl tyres on some die-cast and plastic models have eaten into the hubs they sit on or left dark marks on the card beneath them.

What to do. Keep vinyl cool and dark. Do not let soft vinyl touch other plastics, painted surfaces, card or other vinyl figures: separate them with a barrier of polyester film or give each its own compartment. Keep figures out of soft, floppy PVC bags. A closed box of an inert plastic slows plasticiser loss by limiting evaporation, but do not share that box with other kinds of plastic.

Rubber

Natural rubber is attacked by oxygen, ozone, light and heat. It goes one of two ways: hard, cracked and crumbling, or soft, sticky and misshapen. Old rubber toys collapse, rubber tyres split, and elastic and drive bands perish. Rubber also gives off sulphur compounds from its manufacture that can tarnish metals and stain materials around it.

Keep rubber cool and dark, away from electric motors and other sources of ozone, and not touching card, paint or fabric. A small square of polyester film under a model's tyres protects the base of its box. Never use rubber bands to hold anything in a collection.

Celluloid: off-gassing and its hazard

Celluloid is the most dangerous material in most toy collections. As cellulose nitrate ages, it breaks down and releases nitrogen oxides, which combine with moisture in the air to form nitric acid. The acid attacks the celluloid itself, producing yellowing, crazing, cracking, sticky beads and white crystalline deposits, and it attacks whatever is nearby: metal corrodes, fabric rots, card and paper brown and weaken. The decay is self-accelerating, because the acid produced speeds further breakdown.

A sealed container makes it worse, trapping the acid vapour so that it concentrates. Celluloid needs the opposite of a sealed box: cool, dark, ventilated storage, well away from other objects, especially metal toys, dolls' clothes and textiles. A celluloid doll head sewn to a cloth body often shows rotted fabric around the neck for exactly this reason.

Decaying celluloid is also more flammable than sound celluloid. Store it away from heat, lamps, electrical equipment and sunlight, never in a hot loft or a sealed metal trunk, and keep only modest amounts. If a piece is visibly crumbling, weeping or smells sharply acidic, isolate it in a ventilated place and take advice from a conservator; wash your hands after touching it.

Wood and natural lacquer

Wood breathes with the weather. It takes up moisture and swells, releases it and shrinks, and it moves far more across the grain than along it. Fast drying cracks wood and makes rigid coatings craze and flake. Lacquered toys such as those of Channapatna and Etikoppaka (see Stage 17) have a coating of lac, a natural resin that is harder and less flexible than the wood beneath, so a sudden fall in humidity, direct sun or a spell beside a heater can crack it. Lac also softens with heat, and a car parked in the sun is hot enough to mark it. Natural dyes fade in strong light.

Insects are the other enemy. Wood-boring beetles leave small round exit holes, with fine powder called frass beneath the object when they are active. Termites hollow wood from the inside, often leaving a thin shell, and in India they travel from walls and floors into wooden furniture and whatever it holds. Soft, light woods and plant-based glues are especially attractive.

What to do. Keep wood and lacquer at moderate, stable humidity, roughly 45–55%, never very dry. Keep it out of sun and away from lamps and air-conditioner outlets. If you see fresh frass, isolate the toy at once in a sealed polythene bag and watch for more. Do not spray household insecticide on a toy. Treat the building for termites through a professional pest-control service, and keep collections off floors and away from walls. Freezing kills insects in plain wood, but lacquered, painted and glued pieces can crack; ask a conservator first.

Dolls' fabric, hair and stuffing

Textiles weaken in light long before they visibly fade. Acid from card boxes and wooden stands browns and embrittles them, silk can split into shreds, and metal pins and wire leave rust stains. Clothes moths and carpet beetles eat wool, felt, silk, mohair plush and hair, whether human hair or mohair; silverfish graze on starched cotton. Mohair wigs are fragile and should not be brushed or washed at home. Stuffed toys can hide insects in their stuffing for years.

Store dolls lying down or on a stand that supports the torso, never hung by the neck, wrapped loosely in unbuffered acid-free tissue and in a box with a close-fitting lid. Check them twice a year for insect casings, holes and droppings. To kill pests in a fabric toy, conservators use freezing: seal it in a polythene bag with the air pressed out, freeze at about −18 °C or colder for around two weeks, then let it thaw slowly inside the bag so condensation forms on the bag rather than the toy. Do not freeze toys containing celluloid, composition, painted surfaces, voice boxes or mechanisms without advice. Do not use mothballs: naphthalene and paradichlorobenzene are toxic, and paradichlorobenzene can soften some plastics.

Boxes and cardboard

Most toy boxes were made from cheap, acidic card containing lignin, the natural binder in wood, which yellows and breaks down into acids. Boxes brown, embrittle and fade; their glue fails; silverfish and cockroaches graze their printed surfaces; damp cockles them and grows mould; metal staples rust and stain. A clear window of acetate or PVC yellows, shrinks and sticks to the toy.

Keep the toy and its box together, but consider a sheet of acid-free tissue between a metal toy and the card to stop rubbing. Protect valuable boxes in rigid clear sleeves of PET polyester made for the purpose. Never tape, glue or flatten a box, never peel off an old price sticker, and never stack boxes more than a few high. Store boxes in a larger archival box, upright or flat as their shape suggests, not crushed together.

Stage 15Storage in Practice: The Indian Climate, Display, Records and a Routine

Stages 13 and 14 explained what goes wrong. This stage is about what to do in an ordinary Indian home, on an ordinary budget, and how to keep the records and habits that make a collection last.

The Indian climate

India asks more of a collection than a temperate country does, and the problems change with the season and the city.

The monsoon keeps relative humidity above 80% for weeks across much of the country. That is rust weather for tin plate and cast iron, fast-forward for zinc pest, and mould weather for card, fabric and glue. Coastal cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata stay humid for much of the year, and salt carried on the sea air speeds the corrosion of steel and zinc alloy.

North Indian summers bring the opposite: heat well above 40 °C and, before the monsoon arrives, very dry air. Wood and lacquer crack, and vinyl sweats plasticiser in the heat. The sudden jump from dry heat to monsoon damp is the swing that does the most harm. Dust storms push fine abrasive dust, which holds moisture and salts, into every cupboard.

Power cuts stop dehumidifiers and air-conditioners, and a room that has been kept cool and dry swings quickly back to hot and humid, sometimes with condensation on cold objects. Top-floor flats under a concrete roof slab and the storage lofts above doors and cupboards in many Indian homes become ovens in summer. And termites move through walls and floors into wooden furniture and whatever it holds.

Practical, affordable answers

Choose the place. Store the collection in an interior room, away from outside walls, bathrooms and kitchens, off the floor, and out of lofts, garages and top-floor roof spaces. A powder-coated steel almirah in a central room is one of the best inexpensive storage units in India: it resists termites, does not give off acid vapours as wood does, and closes against dust.

Make small, controlled climates. Inside the almirah, keep toys in airtight polypropylene boxes, grouped by material. Add silica gel, which absorbs moisture from the air in a closed box. As a rough starting point, use 100–200 g of silica gel for a box of about 10 litres, and more in the monsoon. Choose indicating gel that changes colour as it saturates, preferably the orange-to-green kind rather than the older blue kind, which contains a toxic cobalt compound. Keep gel in a cloth sachet or a perforated tub so it never touches a toy.

Recharge the gel. Saturated silica gel does nothing. Spread it on a tray and dry it in a low oven, around 100–120 °C, for two or three hours, or follow the maker's instructions. Let it cool in a closed jar before putting it back, or it will soak up moisture from the room first.

Do not overdo it. Silica gel can dry a sealed box far below what wood, lacquer, dolls and card can tolerate. Keep metal toys in the driest boxes, and wood, lacquer, textiles and card in boxes with less gel, watched by a hygrometer.

Buy a hygrometer. A basic digital hygrometer costs roughly ₹300–1,000 (2026) and tells you the truth about a box, a cupboard or a room. Check its accuracy with the salt test: put a spoonful of damp table salt, wet enough to look like slush, in a small open cap inside a sealed bag or jar with the hygrometer for about twelve hours. It should read close to 75%; note how far yours is out.

For larger collections, a dehumidifier in a closed room helps, and models that restart automatically after a power cut are worth the extra cost; an inverter helps too. Electronic dry cabinets sold for cameras hold a set humidity and cost roughly ₹10,000–40,000 (2026) depending on size, which makes them a sensible home for a small, valuable group of metal toys.

Display, light and UV

Display toys in closed glass cabinets, which keep out dust, insects and fingers. Never place toys in direct sunlight, even for an afternoon, and fit ultraviolet-filtering film to windows in the room. Light cabinets with LED lamps, which give off little ultraviolet and little heat, mounted outside the case or above a glass shelf, never as a hot lamp inside a closed case. Keep cases away from windows, air-conditioner outlets and kitchens.

Rotate the most light-sensitive pieces, such as boxes, dolls in fabric clothes, natural-dyed lacquer and board games, taking them off display for several months at a time. Celluloid needs a ventilated display, not a sealed case shared with metal toys. In areas prone to earthquakes, secure the cabinet itself to the wall and use shelves with a low front lip rather than sticking toys down.

Handling

Handle toys with clean, dry hands or nitrile gloves. Nitrile is best for bare metal, which fingerprints permanently. Cotton gloves reduce grip and snag on tin tabs, flaking paint and dolls' clothing, so avoid them for fragile or sharp toys. Use two hands, support from underneath, and work over a padded table. Never lift a toy by a moving part, a doll by an arm or its head, a locomotive by its tender, or a box by its lid.

Inventory and documentation

Give every item an inventory number and write it on a tag or on the bag or box it lives in, never on the toy or its original box. For each, record: maker, model and catalogue number; variation; material; approximate date; measurements; condition of the toy and the box, graded and described in words; completeness; any restoration; where, when and from whom it was bought; price paid; any provenance; storage location; and the date it was last inspected.

Photograph every item on all sides, its base and marks, all six sides of the box, and every flaw. Scan receipts and letters. Keep the catalogue in a plain spreadsheet, which outlives specialist software, and follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, on two different kinds of storage, one of them away from home. Print a copy once a year, with a note naming two or three specialist dealers or auction houses, so that whoever inherits the collection knows what it is.

Disaster planning

Flood is the commonest disaster for Indian collections. Keep nothing on the floor or on the lowest shelf in flood-prone areas, and keep a few empty waterproof boxes ready. Fire risks include old wiring, charging batteries and celluloid. Fit a smoke alarm near the collection and keep a small extinguisher. Theft is best deterred by discretion: do not publish your address or show the collection's location in photographs you share.

Decide in advance what to save first: the documentation drive, then the most valuable and irreplaceable small pieces. If toys get wet, remove them from wet boxes, drain and air-dry them at room temperature with gentle airflow, not heat. Wet card is fragile; conservators sometimes freeze soaked paper to buy time. Call a conservator before anything valuable dries out wrongly.

Insurance. Household policies often limit or exclude collections. A substantial collection needs specified cover, which in turn needs the inventory and photographs above.

Stage 16An Old Tradition of Play: From Harappa to the Mela

India has one of the longest continuous records of toys anywhere. The story does not start with factories and brands but with potters, turners, carvers and painters, many of whose crafts are still practised in the same towns today.

The Harappan toys

The cities of the Indus, or Harappan, civilisation, which flourished in the third and early second millennia BCE at sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, have yielded a remarkable range of small terracotta objects that archaeologists interpret as toys. They include miniature carts with separate wheels, animals on wheels, animal figurines with movable heads, bird-shaped whistles, rattles and marbles. Cubic dice have been found as well. The National Museum in New Delhi displays Harappan material, and a visit is the best introduction to how old the Indian toy is.

These objects are antiquities, protected by law. Stage 21 explains why a "Harappan toy" offered for sale should be treated as either illegal or fake.

Games that travelled

Several of the world's best-known board games have Indian ancestors.

Chaturanga, a game of war with pieces representing the four arms of an ancient Indian army, is generally regarded as the ancestor of chess, and was established by around the sixth century CE.

Pachisi and its relative chaupar are race games played on a cross-shaped board, often of embroidered cloth, with cowrie shells or long dice. In the Mughal period the game was a courtly pastime, and a large cross-shaped pavement at Fatehpur Sikri is traditionally said to have been used as a board with people as pieces. Adapted in England in the late nineteenth century, pachisi became Ludo.

Moksha patam, also called gyan chaupar, was a game of spiritual progress in which ladders stood for virtues and snakes for vices, and the goal was liberation. It existed in Hindu and Jain versions. Carried to Britain in the colonial period, it became snakes and ladders, keeping the board but gradually losing most of its moral scheme.

Ganjifa were round playing cards, hand-painted on card, cloth or ivory. They became popular in India under the Mughals, and Hindu sets such as the Dashavatara ganjifa, based on the ten avatars of Vishnu, developed alongside the courtly packs. Sawantwadi in Maharashtra and Mysuru in Karnataka are among the places associated with the craft.

Toys of the fair and the temple town

For most of Indian history, toys were bought at melas, the great seasonal fairs, and in pilgrimage towns, where toy stalls stood beside sweet shops and devotional goods. A child brought home a clay whistle, a spinning top, a small drum, a painted wooden animal, a paper windmill or a doll, often made by a family that had made the same thing for generations.

Many toys were tied to the calendar. Dolls were displayed at Navaratri, kites filled the sky at Makar Sankranti, clay figures were made for particular festivals, and small toys were sold at temple festivals across the country. Stage 19 returns to these festival toys.

Stage 17Channapatna and the Lacquered Wood of Karnataka

Gombegala ooru, the town of toys

Channapatna, a town on the road between Bengaluru and Mysuru, is known in Kannada as gombegala ooru, the town of toys. Its lacquered wooden toys are probably the most recognised traditional toys in India, and Channapatna toys and dolls are registered as a geographical indication, a legal protection for products tied to a place and explained in Stage 18.

Local tradition associates the craft's growth with royal patronage in the eighteenth century, under Tipu Sultan. The details of that story are hard to verify, and it is best treated as tradition rather than documented history. What is certain is that the craft has been practised in and around the town for generations.

How the toys are made

The traditional wood is a light, pale, fine-grained wood called ivory wood, aale mara in Kannada, although rubberwood and other timbers are also used today. Seasoned wood is cut into blanks and turned on a lathe, which gives the round, smooth forms typical of the craft: rattles, spinning tops, stacking rings, beads, dolls and rolling animals.

The colour comes from lac, a natural resin secreted by lac insects. A stick of lac, coloured with dye, is pressed against the spinning piece. Friction heats the lac so that it melts and spreads onto the wood as a thin coat. The toy is then polished while still turning to a characteristic glossy finish. The traditional colours came from vegetable dyes, turmeric among them, and many artisans have returned to natural dyes in recent decades.

Decline and revival

Late in the twentieth century, cheap imported plastic toys hit the craft hard. Its revival owed much to designers, social enterprises and government craft bodies who worked with artisans on new designs, safe natural dyes and access to markets in India and abroad. Today Channapatna work sells in state emporia and design shops as well as in the town itself.

Kinnal toys

Karnataka has another important tradition in Kinnal, also spelt Kinhal, in Koppal district. Kinnal craftsmen make figures of light wood, built up and coated before being brightly painted, traditionally for temple festivals and processions as well as for play. Kinnal toys are also registered as a geographical indication.

Stage 18Kondapalli, Etikoppaka and the Toy Towns of the South

Kondapalli

Kondapalli, a village near Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, is famous for carved and painted wooden figures called Kondapalli bommalu. They are made from a very light, soft local wood called tella poniki. Figures are carved in separate parts, joined with an adhesive paste traditionally made from tamarind seed, smoothed, and then painted in bright colours.

The subjects are a portrait of a world: village scenes, bullock carts, women at work, a man climbing a palm tree, the ten avatars of Vishnu, and elephants carrying a howdah. The figures are often used in the Sankranti and Navaratri doll displays known in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as bommala koluvu. Kondapalli toys are a registered geographical indication.

The same qualities that make Kondapalli figures delightful make them fragile: soft wood, plant-based glue and paint that flakes. Insects find all three attractive (see Stage 14).

Etikoppaka

Etikoppaka, a village near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, makes lathe-turned lacquered toys in a tradition related to Channapatna's: soft wood turned on a lathe and coloured with lac. In recent decades Etikoppaka artisans have become known for their use of natural dyes from seeds, bark, roots and leaves. Etikoppaka toys are a registered geographical indication.

Nirmal, Thanjavur and Varanasi

Nirmal, in Telangana, is known for painted wooden toys and figures, particularly of birds, animals and fruit, carved from light wood and brightly painted, as well as for its painted panels. Nirmal toys and crafts are registered as a geographical indication.

Thanjavur, in Tamil Nadu, is known for its dolls, including the thalaiyatti bommai, the head-shaking doll that nods and sways at a touch, and weighted roly-poly dolls that rock back upright when pushed. Thanjavur dolls are registered as a geographical indication.

Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh, has a long tradition of lathe-turned lacquered wooden toys, including miniature kitchen sets, figures and animals. Varanasi wooden lacquerware and toys are registered as a geographical indication.

Stage 19Clay, Paper and Festival Toys

Not every Indian toy was made to last. Many were made to be enjoyed for a season, a festival or a single fair, then broken, dissolved or replaced. That is exactly what makes old examples rare, and why families who kept them hold a quiet kind of treasure.

Clay

Terracotta and painted clay toys are still made across India, and their forms are often very old: whistles, rattles, carts, animals and small figures. Among the best known is the Bankura horse of West Bengal, a stylised terracotta horse with a long neck and pricked ears, made in the Bankura district, particularly around the village of Panchmura, and used both as a votive offering and as decoration.

At Krishnanagar, and especially the neighbourhood of Ghurni in Nadia district, West Bengal, clay modellers are known for finely detailed, realistic painted figures of ordinary people, trades and characters, sold as toys, models and souvenirs.

Much festival clay is unfired or only lightly fired, and painted with water-based colours. Water ruins it, damp softens it, and knocks break it. Store clay toys dry, each padded in its own compartment, and handle them by the base.

Dolls on the steps: golu and its cousins

During Navaratri, many households in south India set out dolls on a stepped display, traditionally with an odd number of steps. In Tamil Nadu it is golu or bommai golu, in Karnataka bombe habba, and in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana bommala koluvu. The display mixes deities, mythological scenes, village life and newer figures, and pieces are often added year by year and passed down.

For a collector, a family's golu dolls can be the oldest continuous toy collection in the house, with known histories: which grandmother bought which figure, and where. That kind of provenance is worth recording while the people who remember it are alive.

Paper, pith and puppets

Paper toys such as windmills, masks and kites belong to fairs and festivals, above all to the kite-flying of Makar Sankranti, known in Gujarat as Uttarayan. In Bengal and Odisha, sholapith, the light white core of a marsh plant, is carved into decorations and figures. Puppets stand between toy and theatre: the string puppets, or kathputli, of Rajasthan, and the painted leather shadow puppets of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Old puppets are collected as folk art, and painted leather is highly sensitive to light.

Tin at the mela

Fairs also sold simple tin toys: whistles, clickers, small drums, and the pop-pop boat, a little tin boat driven by a tiny candle or oil lamp that heats water in a thin chamber and pushes the boat along with a putter. These were cheap, unbranded and mostly destroyed, and early ones are now hard to find.

Stage 20Tin, Plastic and the Licence Years: Indian Toys of the Later Twentieth Century

A closed market

For roughly four decades after independence, India restricted imports of consumer goods heavily, until the economic liberalisation that began in 1991. Imported toys were scarce and expensive. A foreign die-cast car or doll often arrived as a gift from a relative abroad, and was treasured accordingly.

Inside the country, the gap was filled by domestic production, much of it by small workshops and factories. They made tin toys, including friction cars, clockwork animals, aeroplanes, tops with a plunger, whistles and cap pistols firing rolls of paper caps, and, increasingly from the 1960s and 1970s, plastic toys: dolls, rattles, cars, guns, tea sets and building sets. Many carried only a small brand name, or none at all. Printed card games were everywhere, including double-sided Ludo and snakes-and-ladders boards, and Monopoly-style property games with Indian cities on the board, commonly sold under names such as Business. The carrom board was a fixture of Indian homes.

The brands arrive

Licensed international toys came to India before liberalisation in a few cases and in growing numbers after it. Funskool was set up in 1987 as a joint venture between the tyre maker MRF and the American toy company Hasbro, and made international toy lines in India under licence. Its G.I. Joe figures, some produced in colours and combinations not issued elsewhere, have become a recognised collecting field abroad as well as at home. Indian makers also produced toy vehicles modelled on Indian roads, with Ambassador cars, buses and trucks among the favourites.

Collecting the Indian toys of this era

This is a field in which the collector is also the historian. Few reference books exist, makers' records are mostly lost, and many toys were unmarked. Condition is often poor, because these toys were played with hard and kept through many monsoons. Boxes are rarer still.

The evidence that survives is often on the packaging, and a few clues help date it.

Stage 21The Indian Toy Industry Now

From imports to self-reliance

By the 2010s, a large share of the toys sold in India, by most estimates the majority, were imported, much of it from China. Traditional craft centres struggled, and domestic manufacturing of plastic and electronic toys competed mainly on price.

Policy changed sharply around 2020. The government raised basic customs duty on imported toys steeply in 2020 and again in later years. It introduced the Toys (Quality Control) Order, 2020, which made certification by the Bureau of Indian Standards compulsory for toys sold in India, in force from 2021. Toys must meet the relevant Indian standards, notably IS 9873 for the safety of toys and IS 15644 for electric toys, and carry the ISI mark. After concerns from craft groups, handmade toys by registered artisans received relief from parts of these requirements. The government also launched a national plan for the toy sector and held an online India Toy Fair in 2021.

Official figures since then have reported falling imports and rising exports. How far the change will last, and how much it helps traditional craftspeople as opposed to factories, is still being worked out.

Where toys are made

Toy manufacturing in India is spread across many states. Plastic and electronic toys come from factories and workshops in and around several large cities, including the Delhi region and Mumbai, and newer manufacturing investment has gone to several states. Traditional toys remain tied to their towns: Channapatna, Kondapalli, Etikoppaka, Nirmal, Varanasi and the others described in Stages 17 to 19.

What this means for collectors

New Indian toys are easier to date. The ISI mark and printed standard numbers put a recent toy firmly after 2020, which helps separate recent work from older pieces.

Craft toys are being documented. Design schools, craft councils and social enterprises working with artisans publish catalogues and maker details, and a well-labelled new craft toy now carries the kind of information older pieces lack.

The law is about selling new toys, not keeping old ones. The certification rules govern toys offered for sale in India. A private collector keeping an old toy is not in their way, but anyone importing or trading toys in quantity should check the current rules and exemptions with a professional adviser.

Stage 22Collecting Vintage Toys in India Today

Where to look

The richest source is still the family home: the steel almirah, the golu box, the loft trunk, and the grandparents' showcase. After that come antique and flea markets, such as Mumbai's Chor Bazaar, where old tin toys, dolls and games turn up among lamps, gramophones and furniture; antique dealers in the large cities; online marketplaces and classifieds, where most of the trade now happens; and collectors' groups on social media, where members buy, sell and swap. Indian collectors of foreign die-cast, trains and action figures also buy from specialist dealers and auction houses abroad, with the costs set out in Stage 11.

Bargaining is normal in markets, less so online. The same cautions apply everywhere: ask for photographs of the base and every side, ask about repairs, and be wary of anything described as very old with nothing to show for it.

Where to see good toys

Shankar's International Dolls Museum in New Delhi, founded by the cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai, holds a large collection of dolls from India and around the world. The National Crafts Museum and Hastkala Academy in New Delhi covers Indian folk and craft traditions, and the Sanskriti Museums in New Delhi include a museum of Indian terracotta. The National Museum in New Delhi shows Harappan material, including objects interpreted as toys. Many state museums hold folk toys, and the craft towns themselves, especially Channapatna, are living museums.

The law

Antiquities. Under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, an object at least a hundred years old can be an antiquity. Antiquities may not be exported from India without permission, dealing in antiquities requires a licence, and certain categories must be registered with the Archaeological Survey of India. A nineteenth-century lacquered toy, an old ganjifa set or an early doll may therefore be subject to the Act. Anything offered as a Harappan toy is either an illicitly excavated antiquity or a fake, and should not be bought.

Ivory and wildlife products. Trade in ivory is banned in India under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and old ivory objects, including some chess sets, ganjifa cards and dolls' parts, are caught by it. Do not buy or sell anything made of ivory, tortoiseshell or other protected animal material without specialist legal advice.

Imports. Old toys bought abroad attract customs duty and GST like any other goods, whatever their age.

Glossary

A

Action figure — a posable figure, usually of plastic, sold to children as a character or soldier rather than a doll. [Stage 6]

Almirah — a free-standing cupboard; the powder-coated steel kind is a good storage unit in India. [Stage 15]

Antiquity — under Indian law, broadly an object at least a hundred years old, subject to export and dealing controls. [Stage 22]

B

Bisque — unglazed porcelain, used for doll heads. [Stage 6]

Bommala koluvu — the Telugu name for a stepped festival display of dolls. [Stage 18]

Buffered — containing an alkaline reserve; good for paper, unsuitable for wool, silk and some dyes. [Stage 15]

C

C-scale — a condition scale from C1, poor, to C10, mint. [Stage 8]

Celluloid — an early plastic of cellulose nitrate and camphor; flammable, and gives off acid as it decays. [Stage 4]

Cellulose acetate — a plastic used in dolls and small parts that can suffer vinegar syndrome. [Stage 4]

Chaturanga — an ancient Indian war game, generally regarded as the ancestor of chess. [Stage 16]

Clockwork — a mechanism driven by a wound steel spring. [Stage 3]

Composition — a moulded mixture of wood pulp or sawdust with glue, used for dolls. [Stage 4]

D

Die-cast — made by forcing molten metal under pressure into a steel mould, or die. [Stage 4]

F

Frass — the fine powder left by wood-boring insects. [Stage 14]

Friction drive — a heavy flywheel set spinning by pushing a toy along, which then drives it. [Stage 3]

G

Ganjifa — round, hand-painted Indian playing cards. [Stage 16]

Gauge — the distance between the rails of a model railway. [Stage 5]

Geographical indication (GI) — a registered name reserved for goods from a defined place, made in a traditional way. [Stage 18]

Gesso — a white ground of chalk and glue under paint on wood. [Stage 3]

Golu — the Tamil Navaratri display of dolls on steps. [Stage 19]

Green ear — a green stain on a vinyl doll's head caused by metal earrings. [Stage 14]

H

Hollow-casting — casting a figure as a thin shell by pouring out surplus molten metal. [Stage 3]

Hygrometer — an instrument that measures relative humidity. [Stage 15]

J

Japanning — a hard, baked lacquer finish on early tin toys. [Stage 3]

K

Kondapalli bommalu — carved and painted wooden figures from Kondapalli, Andhra Pradesh. [Stage 18]

L

Lac — a natural resin from lac insects, used to colour and coat turned wooden toys. [Stage 17]

Lignin — the natural binder in wood that makes cheap card yellow and turn acidic. [Stage 14]

Lithography — printing a design onto flat tin plate before it is cut and shaped. [Stage 3]

M

Malignant plastics — plastics that damage their neighbours as they decay: cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, plasticised PVC and polyurethane foam. [Stage 14]

Married piece — a toy combined with a box or parts from another example. [Stage 10]

MIB — mint in box. [Stage 1]

MOC — mint on card; a carded figure never opened. [Stage 1]

Moksha patam — an Indian game of virtues and vices, ancestor of snakes and ladders. [Stage 16]

Mould number — the model number incised on a bisque doll's head. [Stage 7]

N

Nitrile gloves — thin synthetic gloves, preferred for handling bare metal toys. [Stage 15]

P

Pachisi — an Indian race game on a cross-shaped board, ancestor of Ludo. [Stage 16]

PET — polyethylene terephthalate, a stable polyester used for rigid box protectors. [Stage 14]

Plasticiser — an additive that makes PVC flexible, and which migrates out over time. [Stage 14]

Polypropylene — a stable plastic suitable for storage boxes. [Stage 15]

Provenance — the recorded history of a toy's ownership. [Stage 15]

R

Recast — a copy made in a mould taken from an original; usually slightly smaller. [Stage 10]

Redline — an early Hot Wheels car with red-striped tyres, made until about 1977. [Stage 5]

Relative humidity (RH) — the moisture in the air compared with the most it could hold at that temperature. [Stage 13]

Repaint — a toy whose original finish has been covered or removed and replaced. [Stage 9]

Reseal — a carded figure opened and resealed. [Stage 10]

Ring-turning — an Erzgebirge technique of turning animal profiles into a ring of wood and slicing it. [Stage 3]

S

Scale — the size of a model relative to the real object. [Stage 5]

Silica gel — a granular drying agent that absorbs moisture and can be recharged by heating. [Stage 15]

Spread — the gap between what a dealer charges and what a dealer pays. [Stage 11]

T

Tabs and slots — the folded metal tongues and slits that hold tin toys together. [Stage 3]

Tella poniki — the light, soft wood used for Kondapalli toys. [Stage 18]

Tin plate — thin sheet steel coated with tin. [Stage 3]

U

Unbuffered tissue — acid-free tissue with no alkaline reserve, safe with all materials. [Stage 15]

Upgrade — a common toy altered to look like a rare variation. [Stage 10]

V

Variation — a difference introduced during a toy's production run. [Stage 7]

Vinegar syndrome — the decay of cellulose acetate, releasing acetic acid. [Stage 4]

Vinyl — plasticised PVC, the soft plastic of dolls and figures. [Stage 4]

W

Wood wool — fine wood shavings, also called excelsior, used to stuff early teddy bears. [Stage 6]

Z

Zamak — the zinc alloy used for die-cast toys; Mazak in Britain. [Stage 4]

Zinc pest — irreversible internal corrosion of impure zinc alloy castings. [Stage 13]

Further Reading and Organisations

History and general

• Antonia Fraser, A History of Toys.
• R. C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations.
• Andrew Topsfield (ed.), The Art of Play: Board and Card Games of India.

Tin, die-cast and trains

• David Pressland, The Art of the Tin Toy.
• Mike and Sue Richardson, Dinky Toys and Modelled Miniatures.
• Marcel Van Cleemput, The Great Book of Corgi.
• John Ramsay, Ramsay's British Diecast Model Toys Catalogue, in many editions.
• Chris and Julie Graebe, The Hornby Gauge O System.

Dolls and action figures

• Dorothy S., Elizabeth A. and Evelyn J. Coleman, The Collector's Encyclopedia of Dolls.
• Stephen J. Sansweet, Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive.

Care and conservation

• Anita Quye and Colin Williamson (eds), Plastics: Collecting and Conserving.
• Yvonne Shashoua, Conservation of Plastics: Materials Science, Degradation and Preservation.
• Garry Thomson, The Museum Environment.
• The National Trust, The National Trust Manual of Housekeeping.

India

• Aditi Ranjan and M. P. Ranjan (eds), Handmade in India.
• Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Handicrafts of India.

Organisations and clubs

• Antique Toy Collectors of America.
• Train Collectors Association, United States.
• Hornby Railway Collectors' Association, United Kingdom.
• United Federation of Doll Clubs.
• Crafts Council of India.
• INTACH, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

Museums

• Young V&A, London, formerly the V&A Museum of Childhood.
• The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York.
• Deutsches Spielzeugmuseum, Sonneberg.
• Spielzeugmuseum, Nuremberg.
• Shankar's International Dolls Museum, New Delhi.
• National Crafts Museum and Hastkala Academy, New Delhi.
• Sanskriti Museums, New Delhi.
• National Museum, New Delhi.

Research tools

• The online archives of realised prices kept by specialist toy auctioneers such as Vectis, Bertoia and Morphy.
• Makers' trade catalogues, in original or reprint, held by collectors' clubs.

Image Sourcing Sheet