Antique toys are becoming very rare and collectible, but due to their age, many have some slight imperfections.This is something you have to consider when buying them, as a toy which has an original part missing or broken, is worth less in value than a perfect one, and this will reflect in the sale price if you ever want to sell it on at a later date.
A toy with its original box/wrapping and in new condition will be worth more than one without the box even if the toys are identical in looks, age and condition. The ones that fetch the highest prices at auction are the ones that have never been played with and are still in the original box. These are very rare as most toys are bought for children to play with, and very few children would want to have a toy just to keep in its box on a shelf to look at but not to handle. The people who have made the most money from selling antique toys are those that had the foresight to see what would be collectible in the future, who then bought the toy and put it away in storage for safe keeping until the time was right many years later to bring it out and sell it when there was a demand because of its rarity value.
I regret to say that I only kept one toy from my childhood, and that is a Bagatelle game made from Bakelite, a forerunner to modern plastics, which has metal balls like marbles which are shot around the board by pulling a knob attached to a spring, so the harder you pulled the knob, the faster the spring would react, and the balls would shoot around the board and land in pockets with varying scores. The aim was to get the highest score you could by getting the balls to fall into the right pockets. I suppose you could say it was a type of early Pinball Wizard game, but it gave me many hours of fun when I was about 5 years old. I would love to know what games/toys other people have kept over the years.
