Innehållsförteckning för November 2025 från Kovels Antique Trader

1485 West Housatonic Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201 (413) 448-8922 info@fontainesauction.com www.fontainesauction.com…

For many people, it’s second nature to skip right from Halloween into the Christmas season. I’m not one of them. When the weather turns cooler and it’s time to rotate the wardrobe to include more jackets and sweaters, I look forward to donning all the colors and themes that go along with fall. That means bringing out some lovely pieces of vintage costume jewelry that don’t get as much wear other times of the year. The warm browns, deep yellows, and orange hues go right along with chilly fall air. Since I don’t skate over Thanksgiving, donning jewelry is also a fun way to honor the holiday. Yes, collectors have options related explicitly to “Turkey Day,” featuring themes ranging from stately birds to a bountiful harvest. Lunch at the Ritz…

Hard-boiled, square-jawed detective Dick Tracy has secured his place in pop culture as an iconic lawman who keeps the streets safe. His comic strip, created by Chester Gould, debuted in 1931 and kept millions of readers of all ages glued to their newspapers from the Great Depression through the mid-century and beyond. Using intelligence and innovation to capture various criminals, the character was so popular that he became a hero in movies from 1937 to 1947 and again in 1990. He also starred in a radio series in the 1940s and a TV show in the 1950s. Dick Tracy’s popularity also resulted in an array of licensed toys, games, and other merchandise that’s sought by collectors today. Jones Auction House of Spring Brook Township, Pennsylvania, offered collectors a range of…

For generations of kids, the name Fisher-Price has been synonymous with childhood, and most of us have at least one of its toys sitting on the living room floor, waiting to trip a parent. The toys’ sounds also formed an indelible soundtrack of playtime, whether it was the realistic “moo-oooo” when the barn doors of the Little People Play Family Farm were opened, the loud popping noises the colorful balls in the Corn Popper made when we pushed it, or the distinct chattering, ringing, and bell sounds of the googly-eyed Chatter Telephone. With its knack for shrinking the world down to kid size, Fisher-Price has produced thousands of classic toys during its 95-year history and continues to do so today, though it’s now owned by Mattel. But it’s the vintage…

To list your antiques-related event (show, auction, convention, etc.) for free in Kovels Antique Trader, and on our website, antiquetrader.com, email event information (date, location, contact information, times) at least six weeks in advance to: ATNews@aimmedia.com. Listings will be included on a space-available basis. Kovels Antique Trader assumes no responsibility for any show not listed in our print editions, but it will be listed in our online calendar. CALIFORNIA Every first Sunday of the month, Alameda. Alameda Point Antiques Faire, 3900 Maine St., Alameda, CA. The Alameda Point Antiques Faire is the largest antiques show in Northern California, boasting 800 dealer booths. All items are 20 years old or older. For more info, visit alamedapointantiquesfaire.com. Every second Sunday of the month, Pasadena. World’s largest flea market at the Rose Bowl,…

A- current exhibition at the Ridgewood Historical Society’s Schoolhouse Museum in Ridgewood, New Jersey, is teaching a fascinating lesson. Set within an 1872 one-room schoolhouse, the show 200 Years of Childhood in America, explores the evolving nature of childhood in the United States from the late 18th to the mid-20th centuries. Although the exhibition displays many playful items, such as toys and board games, visitors learn that being a child in America wasn’t always fun. With the assistance of its diverse selection of playthings and antiques from the show’s selected timeline, 200 Years tells about the dark realities of being a young person in early America. During this time, kids were considered as badly behaved miniature adults, with some forced into slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation or employed in mines or…

For many Boomer and Gen Jones kids, Christmas morning in the 1960s meant unwrapping toys that would send today’s helicopter parents into a dead faint. One of my most memorable, slightly dangerous toys was the Creepy Crawlers Thing-maker by Mattel, introduced in 1964. Armed with bottles of colorful Plasti-Goop, my brother and I would pour liquid plastic into metal molds shaped like bugs, lizards, and spiders. Then came the “fun” part: sliding the molds into an open-faced electric hot plate to bake until the goo solidified. The result? A wriggly menagerie of rubbery critters ready to terrify our five younger sisters—well, all but the youngest—she was more likely to eat one (although I think she confused them with Incredible Edibles, another “toy” imbued with the ability to cauterize open wounds).…

'11 admit it. I wasn’t much of an action figure girl. Barbie. Ken, Skipper, sure, but G.I. Joe never marched through any of my Barbie play scenarios. If he had, I probably would have married him off to Astronaut Barbie and sent them on a backyard honeymoon in Barbie’s Austin-Healey 3000. The closest I came was Stretch Armstrong, whose rubbery limbs could extend four feet from fingertip to fingertip. He doubled as a slingshot whenever I got the urge to pelt my siblings with Super Stuff, the gooey pink slime that began life as powder but stuck to anything and everything once mixed with water. Beyond Stretch, though, action figures mostly belonged to the neighbor boys next door who seemed to have armies of plastic heroes lined up on their…

The sharp click-clack of Klik Klaks, aka Clackers, is etched into my memory, echoing through our house as those acrylic balls swung dangerously close to faces, arms, my mother’s ceramic elephant collection, and who knows what else. To this day, I’m still surprised that my sisters and I never knocked each other senseless with those swinging spheres of doom. A single misplaced swing could have flattened someone Muhammad Ali–style. But if Clackers were the soundtrack of my childhood, then Hot Wheels, Creepy Crawlers, and a frequently used bug habitat were its heartbeat. My first Hot Wheels car was a bright red Mustang that my daddy bought for me after I told him (at age eight) that I wanted a Mustang of my own. Santa ensured I received enough Hot Wheels…

Part scrapbook, part cultural history, Lights, Camera, Lionel Trains! celebrates the toy trains that became an American icon. With more than 100 photo essays and lively vignettes, longtime Classic Toy Trains editor Roger Carp delivers not just a collector’s guide, but a nostalgic journey through the 20th century. What I found especially engaging is how these vignettes spotlighted the everyday innovators and families who brought Lionel trains to life and the many celebrities who helped cement their cultural status. Richly illustrated, the book offers a nostalgic journey through advertisements, family snapshots, showroom displays, and even pop culture cameos, including a 1953 I Love Lucy episode that featured a streamlined passenger train. Everyday collectors appear alongside famous personalities, underscoring Lionel’s unique place in 20th-century life, and it is delightful. Mr. Carp’s narrative…

At Marz Auctions’ Sizzling Summer Signs, Toys, and Cycles sale on September 6, collectors spread their love across a trove of games, toy vehicles, vintage robots, and more offered by the auction house in Myakka City, Florida. Though Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh! are the long-established titans of trading card games, newer and rapidly growing games are also taking collectors by storm, including One Piece, which debuted in Japan in 2022 and is based on the popular manga series. Two sealed booster boxes of One Piece’s initial release, Romance Dawn (OP-01), were among the best-selling lots. A sealed booster white-bottomed box case scored $6,765. Hard to find still sealed, this contains 12 boxes, each with 24 packs of cards, and is the second printing of the first set. A…