<b>By DOUG GRAVES<br>
Ohio Correspondent</b> </p><p> COLUMBUS, Ohio — Fritz and Nancy Vogel of St. Marys, Ohio, know all about farming.<br>
They once tended 140 dairy cows on their 100-acre farm in Auglaize County. They had thoughts of getting out of farming altogether, but in 1980 Fritz made a small purchase that would totally change their lives.<br>
That year, Fritz bought a small farm toy for his son. Within the next two years, he and Nancy were collecting more farm toys than which they could keep track. In just two short years, the couple went from dealing with full-scale tractors to those on a 1/16-scale or 1/64-scale.<br>
“At the beginning, me and another guy had an eight-foot table and I was afraid I didn’t have enough items to fill the space,” Fritz said. “I didn’t have much at the start, but as you go to shows and meet people, you acquire more stuff and your collection grows.”<br>
He and Nancy now have thousands of old and new farm toys, from a thimble-sized farm animal to pedal tractors; he has 80 pedal tractors alone. To this day, the pair attend 32 shows in five states each year. Last week they manned a booth at the Expo-Ohio Farm Toy & NASCAR Collectibles Show in Columbus.<br>
“This hobby of collecting farm toys is like any other business,” Fritz said. “Things top off a bit. I can’t say it’s on a slide of sorts, but it’s not what it once was.”<br>
Just as baseball card collectors have their own price books, farm toy collectors have a similar guide book. Prices in the book reflect the demand for each piece, as well as condition of the item. And while baseball card collectors can check the price of a Pete Rose rookie card (the year was 1963), farm toy enthusiasts can look up the value of, say, a 1/64-scale John Deere tractor manufactured in 1963.<br>
“There are certain things that make one toy more expensive than another,” Fritz said. “Kids don’t play with these toys, because they’re manufactured to be collectibles. And what most people don’t know is that the manufacturer can make them only if they once existed and they’re to scale.”<br>
The Vogel collection includes a multitude of John Deere, Deutsch, Moline, Allis-Chalmers, Case, Massey Ferguson and International Harvester items, just to name a few. Most prized in this collection and others are die-cast replicas made by Ertl, the household name when it comes to farm toy collectibles.<br>
Such items can command prices between $60-$800 per toy. But, surprisingly, most are relatively cheap.<br>
Recently, the Vogels purchased a 1930 replica for $100, and in a short time the value skyrocketed to $800.<br>
“True-scale toys are the real collectibles,” Fritz said. “These are the old dime-store toys and they’re not sold in dealerships.” The Vogels own many true-scale toys, many made by the Carter Manufacturing Co.<br>
A booming hobby? The Vogels are hesitant to say it’s “booming;” that really doesn’t matter to this couple.<br>
“This is a fun hobby and it’s taken us to a lot of shows and a lot of people,” Fritz said. “We simply enjoy it.” |
