Turning those playthings into profits
Maxine Kucera took a laundry basket full of old dolls into the Toy Roadshow on Tuesday.
And she left with a laundry basket full of old dolls.
“It was just a big bust,” the Moyie Springs woman said as she left the Coeur d’Alene Inn.
The folks at the Toy Roadshow didn’t offer enough money to entice Kucera to part with some of her doll collection, including a Marilyn Monroe doll – still in the box – and others as much as 70 years old.
But many who visited the Toy Roadshow’s opening day at the Coeur d’Alene Inn left with lighter loads – some with only a freshly cut check in hand.
A Buddy “L” pressed steel truck from the 1920s was the morning’s big moneymaker. Pete Exline of Medical Lake sold the red truck to the International Toy Collectors Association for $400.
Archie Davis, vice president of the association, said he had offered a man $800 for two toy robots Tuesday, but the man decided to take some time to think it over.
“There’s been some nice stuff coming in here,” Davis said. Some people come to the Roadshow out of curiosity, he said, and are reluctant to actually part with the toys they bring. Others don’t hesitate a second to trade in their old toys – or their grown children’s toys – for cash.
“It’s just stuff I gathered up at my house,” Post Falls’ Susi Marshall said.
Davis poked through the three cardboard boxes of toys in the back of Marshall’s pickup.
“A lot of ‘30s and ‘40s stuff,” Davis said.
Marshall said she was born in 1934. The toys were ones she had played with as a little girl.
“It’s your generation that’s the most collectible,” Davis told her.
He offered Marshall $60 for the three boxes of worn dolls, stuffed toys, a Smokey Bear doll, Tinker Toys and a metal lunchbox.
Davis, a toy collector himself for the past 16 years, takes the Toy Roadshow to 30 or 40 cities a year. The association has blind bids from the more than 6,000 toy collectors in its membership and buys many of the toys that come in.
He’s seen toys go for anywhere from $5 to thousands of dollars.
The baby boomer toys are extremely popular, Davis said. Most collectors are looking for post-World War II toys. Trains by Lionel and American Flyer are popular.
Character toys, cowboy memorabilia, old Hot Wheels, PEZ without feet, wind-up tin toys, early Mickey Mouse toys made of tin and Popeye toys are also highly collectible, he said.
Starlene Staudt and Marv Satuloff of Coeur d’Alene carried in two boxes from Staudt’s attic and a radio controlled helicopter.
“I don’t even know if any of it is worth anything,” Staudt said. “I really just want to get rid of it.”
Staudt’s children are grown now. Her daughter is 42 and her son is 35. She didn’t tell either of them she was selling off their old toys: A Radio Shack RC Porsche. A ViewMaster. A Putt-Putt Railroad. The Hot Wheels Spider-Man’s Web of Terror play set.
“You know, you store them away for years and years then the kids move away and you got this attic full,” Satuloff said. “Are you gonna ship it to them? They don’t have any place to store it.”
Davis offered Staudt $60 for everything. “You don’t have to carry it back,” he said.
As Staudt was waiting for her check, Nine Mile’s Judy Longworth began unpacking carefully wrapped dolls and placing them on a table for Davis to see. The dolls were her grandmother’s – gifts from Longworth’s great-great aunt who lived in Greece.
“Dolls of the world,” Davis said. “It’s not our forte.”
He suggested Longworth take the dolls to a “doll hospital” that specializes in doll repair and restoration.
Davis wasn’t interested, but Staudt was. She and Satuloff came over to the table to look at the dolls. For years, Longworth said, she had kept the dolls stored in her barn.
“I had them all out when my grandbabies were babies,” she said. “They were scared to death of them. They said, ‘Grandma, all those eyes looking at me.’ I thought, why have them in a box? That’s silly.”