An investment worth a salute - antique toys

Nation's Business, Dec, 1987 by Ray Brady

An Investment Worth A Salute

If you're sitting there looking at your portfolio, and you feel that you've been slaughtered by your stocks and beaten down by your bonds, take a break and look at another form of asset--one that seems to have rewarded some of its followers a bit better than the financial markets have been doing lately.

In fact, if you have some of these little fellows lying around the attic, dusty and forgotten, it might help you to make up at least part of your financial loss.

This type of asset--a particularly apt one with the Christmas season nearly upon us--is the toy soldier.

Those old toy soldiers that used to go for a nickel in the five-and-dime stores of our youth (or, at least, during my youth) now bring some comparatively handsome prices. And if you have a box of the English-made W. Britains, Ltd., soldiers--say, Grenadier Guards, proudly marching along in their red coats--well, you may not realize it, but some of those can bring an especially handsome price.

Case in point: A set of Britains Highlanders --the kilted "ladies from Hell," as the Germans of World War I called them--sold for the equivalent of a dollar or two in the 1930s. If they're in their original box, they now bring somewhere around $2,000.

If you have some characters tooting horns, wearing pith helmets and white jackets, that may be the Bahamas band, put out by Britains as well. They go for around $3,000 to $4,000 a set, depending on just what condition the bandsmen are in (obviously, the more battered toy soldiers are, the less collectors are willing to pay for them).

If toy soldiers are fetching fairly high prices, it may be because of the people who collect them. Many are wealthy, like magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes, who has about 100,000 toy soldiers. Both Wyeths (painters Jamie and Andrew) collect the little warriors.

Peter Blum, who runs the Soldier Shop on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, says it's not militarism that turns people into collectors. "Sometimes it's nostalgia, and sometimes it's just the appeal of the colorful uniforms," says Blum. "Also, many collectors are history buffs, and there's a lot of history tied up in those regiments."

Altogether, Blum estimates, about 100,000 collectors go through old attics, attend auctions or otherwise keep an eye out for old soldiers. Blum himself recalls being invited recently to a Manhattan apartment, to look inside an old Louis Vuitton trunk. It was filled with toy soldiers, including one box where the soldiers had real steel helmets. That was the key: They were made just before Great Britain entered World War II, when Britains went from making toy soldiers to making weapons for real soldiers. That gave the box its particular value: $7,000.

Toy soldiers first came to public notice as a collectible item when the collection of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., was auctioned off. "The price that it brought doesn't seem so outstanding now," says Blum, "but in the late 1970s it made people sit up and whistle."

Wall Streeter Burtt Ehrlich made them sit up and whistle, too. His collection consisted entirely of Britains soldiers. Experts estimate he spent about $25,000 to $30,000 to put it together. The selling price for his collection: an astounding $750,000.

Collectors pay high prices for Mignots, Hoydes, Courtenays and other makes of soldier. Still, many collections revolve around W. Britains. There's a good reason for that. For many years, it was the pre-eminent firm making soldiers, and it had all those colorful regiments of the British army to model its figures on. And its soldiers were dated. The year of their manufacture was on the bottom of the figure or on the box, and collectors know immediately just when a set was made.

Some idea of what's been happening to values can be seen in places like the Soldier Shop. Consider the price of what are called "new old soldiers"-- newly made soldiers, usually hand-painted, authentic in every detail and made in places as far away as New Zealand.

Want to see the 21st Lancers, Winston Churchill's old regiment, in action again? A set of three horsemen will cost you $70. Or, watch the Black Watch charge again, just as they did at Waterloo--$50 for six.

But the real values are in the old soldiers that may be up in your attic. As in most collections, rarity means money. If you have a box of Britains Girl Scouts--known as Girl Guides in England --you've got about $800 to $900 worth of lead sitting there. Most boys collect soldiers usually at an age when they aren't yet interested in girls--even in miniature--and there weren't too many sets of Girl Guides sold.

Britains also put out a set of Japanese soldiers, modeled on those who fought the Russians in 1905. That war was a long way from Great Britain, so most boys didn't care much about it, and not many of the soldiers were made.

Peter Blum has some on his desk. They're a bit battered and there are only five of them--not a complete set. But because few boys wanted them when they came out, collectors will pay $550 just for this small band of children's cast-offs.