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Vintage Halloween Collectibles

Street.Com has a very nice article on Halloween collectibles. Perhaps the most surprising point it makes is that the vintage era for collectibles lasted from 1919 until 1935 – a time when Halloween celebrations consisted mostly of adult parties where guests would play games and take home prizes: candy boxes, lanterns, or noisemakers. According to the article, Halloween did not morph into a kids’ holiday (with door to door trick-or-treating) until after World War II – a fact that flies in the face of modern commentators who lament that adults are stealing the holiday from children.

History lesson aside, mof the article is devoted to helping you identify which collectible items are most valuable

  • The hierarchy of Halloween collectible imagery has always been fairly logical: The pumpkin, or its anthropomorphic incarnation, the jack-o’-lantern, is the most common symbol of the holiday. Black cats, skeletons and owls appear frequently, followed by witches, bats and, more rarely, devils. For collectibles, within any given genre, this means devil imagery is the hardest to find — and often it commands the highest prices.