Catalogues of Christmas Past

[Anonymous]

Here's a great website I just came across.

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cmc/index-e.html

It contains a selection of Canadian mail order catalogues from the 1880's through the 1970's that you can go through. A search for "train" brings up the train pages from the Christmas catalogues included.

The earliest featured catalogue with toy trains is the 1906 Simpson's Christmas catalogue. It shows an Issmayer (German) tinplate train on its toy page. The description is as follows: "MECHANICAL TRAINS, tin, with track, 2 pieces, 6 sections, 25c; 3 pieces, 50c; 4 pieces, round track, $1.00; with crossings, etc., $1.50; with switches, etc., $1.75, $2.00 and $3.00." It would be great to find out what the specific components of these sets were! It's amazing to think of buying trains for those kind of prices. (Note: This page doesn't come up when you do a search for train. There are also pages with trains in the 1934-35 Eaton's Fall and Winter Catalogue that don't come up either.)

Just over a decade later, Eaton's (Canada's main mail order catalogue for many years) has American Flyer clockwork sets in their 1918-19 Christmas catalogue, which are described and ilustrated much better. Twenty years later, Flyer is gone from Eaton's and Marx dominates, along with there being sets by Lionel (most expensive) and Bub (least expensive). The same is true for the postwar catalogues shown (although there are also clockwork sets by Mettoy and Hafner besides Bub). In 1975, the train section is now filled with Tyco HO items. Tinplate still hasn't left, however, as there is a battery operated set with tin lithographed cars made by Haji of Japan. (An error comes up when I try to view the '75 catalogue, but I have an actual copy of this one.)

In the Nerlich wholesale catalogues of 1938-39 and 1939-40, Flyer is still king. However, there are also trains and accessories by Hafner, Marx, Lionel and European brands.

Of course, there's plenty of great stuff in these catalogues besides the trains! It's really great to look back at the fashions and consumer goods of way back when and imagine going through these catalogues when they were new!

Enjoy!

[pbjwilson]

Sask,
Thanks for sharing that site. I tried and tried yesterday to access it but it was'nt working. Today it poped right up. I love looking at old catalog pages, when the stuff I collect now was commonplace and cheap! Thanks again.

[overall]

Next to the Lionel catalog, the Sears "wishbook" Christmas catalog was my favorite. I spent I don't know how many hours looking at the train offerings along with other toys too. For a while,they had Dennis the Menace cartoons in the margins. That was a lot of fun too. Back then, they had trains by Lionel, marx and allstate. This was back in the sixties.

George