How Farm Toys Transformed into Collectible Treasures

By Bill Vossler
Published on May 20, 2009
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Link chains make this Arcade Caterpillar look realistic.

Few would have predicted the meteoric rise of the farm toy.

A latecomer to the market, the early farm toy was a simple, generic plaything produced in numbers so small that it barely occupied a niche of the toy category. But the evolution of the farm tractor changed everything. Manufacturers discovered demand for well-made, realistic, branded farm toys was every bit as strong as the market for full-size tractors – setting the stage for the transformation from toy to treasure.

The first known farm toys were a small cart and plow created for the children of England’s King Edward I late in the 13th century. For the next 500 years, farms toys continued to be handmade, of corn husks, scrap wood, empty thread spools, old spoons, spare metal, wood knots and thread (for horse reins) – in short, whatever was available.

Commercial farm toys did not appear until the 1880s, when the Wilkins Toy Co., Keene, N.H., offered a cast iron horse-drawn hay tedder. The tedder was soon followed by three other pieces: the Wilkins plow, mower and dump rake (listed here in the order of most to least difficult to find today).

Ray Lacktorin, Stillwater, Minn., collected all four Wilkins pieces. “After my first farm toy show in 1970 in St. Charles, Ill., I heard guys talking about farm toys I had never heard of,” he recalls. “Somebody had copies of an original Wilkins catalog, and when I saw the toys, I said, ‘Those I’m going to try to own.’ It took me a long time to do it, but I have all four pieces.”

Market slow to develop

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