Getting a little weary of posts about vintage Creative Playthings toys on eBay? How about something completely different: vintage Brio toys on Swedish eBay!
You might think of Brio as just the other toy train company--you know, the one that doesn't take New York Times reporters hostage for nosing around their Chinese outlaw lead paint factory--but it turns out they've been making wooden toys of all sorts for nearly a hundred years.
And those thrifty Swedes apparently held onto them, because Tradera, the local eBay subsidiary, always seems to have a healthy supply. There are a lot of pulltoys. The dachsund-shaped Hund seems to be the most popular, if not exactly the most interesting.
I was tipped off to vintage Brio toys by Christopher, the designer of Our Children's Gorilla, who's a fan and collector and who, like most Swedish kids, grew up with the stuff. Unlike Christopher, though, I don't speak Swedish, don't know when stuff was made, or have any sense of what prices should be.
All I know is this: the vaguely Scandinavian modernist Mickeys and Donalds are probably more expensive than they should be, thanks to rampant Disney collectors. And that the new old stock 1969 Brio dollhouse version of Arne Jacobsen's Series 7 chair is awesome at any price, and it happens to be 77 kroner, around $12.
My favorite has to be the ladybug tank, which for some reason, reminds me of the end of Starship Troopers.
All these listings say they're open to "Internationellt" buyers, but with no idea what to pay or how to sign up for PayPalSvenka, I'm just treating this stuff as eye candy.
Search for Brio on Tradera, or weed out the beat up strollers by narrowing it to Brio in the Samlarsaker category [tradera.com]
