 toys robots. Sotheby’s is a very prestigious auction house. When they decided to handle tin-litho toys in 1996, it gave those toys a huge amount of credibility. They became very hot very quickly after that. Luckily, I had already bought quite a few of them, so I was kind of ahead of the curve. I was able to build a reasonably good collection before they got too expensive.
In the last two years, we’ve had several major collections get dumped on the markets via auction, and so the market is quite saturated right now. It’s a great time to buy if you’re just starting to collect because there are a lot of them on the market—the prices are down because of the economy and the glut of availability. They’re in a low cycle, but I have a feeling they’re going to be popping again in the next couple of years.
Collectors Weekly: One of these robots went for $42,000, right?
Pinchot: Yes, Machine Man, a variation of the one of the Gang of Five robots, which are each about 18 inches tall. They’re huge, skirted (as opposed to separated legs) tin-lithographed robots. One has a target on its chest, and when you shoot a dart at it, it turns and moves away. Another only has bump-and-go action and a lighted face. One of them makes a train noise, and then there is the aforementioned Radicon Robot, which was not the first in that series but was one of the earliest wireless remote-controlled toys.
Vintage toy robots remind us of a simpler time when things weren’t quite so advanced and scary.
That group of robots was at the top of the collecting game for the longest time. When Machine Man showed up at Sotheby’s in 1996, it was a variation no one really knew existed. The Gang were the “Gang of Four” prior to this time, then all of a sudden there was a fifth member added. Since then, others have turned up that have sold for even more money.
Now people are realizing that the Gang of Five robots are not as rare as originally thought—several more have turned up. In regards to the value and the collectability of Machine Man, while it’s still a very hot robot, it’s not as hot as some of the even rarer toy robots that have turned up since that people never knew existed. But the Machine Man auction really got people’s attention. It prompted people start looking for robots and pulling them out of their attics.
Collectors Weekly: What do you think of the reproduction robots made since the mid-’90s?
Pinchot: Reproductions both hurt and help the market at the same time. They help because they get people interested in the original toys, but they hurt because people who would have spent real money to buy an original, perhaps $1,000, will now buy a very close reproduction for $20, so those buyers are now out of the market.
But whenever a reproduction raises the social consciousness of a genre as a whole, it’s a good thing. Suddenly the originals become more valuable and are preserved. A lot of my friends are collectors, and we all know that we can’t take this stuff with us; we understand that we are all just caretakers, preserving these things for future generations. So, to the extent that the reproductions encourage preservation of the originals, that’s a good thing. They’ll be coveted for a long time.
Collectors Weekly: Is there a way to distinguish the repros from the originals?
Pinchot: Yes, but it takes a bit of doing. You have to kind of know them to begin with. If you’re just looking at them fresh, it can be very difficult to tell the difference. In fact, even some seasoned collectors will go on the chat boards and say, “Is this original or is this a reproduction?” You’ll get shifty people who will rub off a maker’s mark to make a repro look like it’s an original instead of a reproduction. It can be tough.
The best advice I can give new collector is to get involved, either by going to shows to meet knowledgeable dealers or by reading books and auction catalogs. The more educated you are, the better armed you’ll be. Eventually, you’ll be able to spot the differences very easily.
For example, someone may reproduce a Lilliput robot. It will be very close to 