V is for Vehicles

Continuing with the contents of Joe's salesman's sample case; we arrive at the road transport, and some clues to the dating of the set, a set which the factory have shown an interest in buying-back, but aren't answering queries-on - often the way, as I discovered with the Tatra premium guys.

The vehicles are pretty crude, even by the standards of the basic range currently in Dregano's catalogue, and point to that period immediately after the war (World, Second - for younger readers!), when Germany was suffering the same (or worse) privations as everyone else they'd involved in their [not-so] 'grand social experiments'!

Lack of money, materials, machine tools and manpower which would place this sample around 1950, maybe a bit earlier? The sedan-cars with their teardrop back-ends are a post-war trope, while the lorries are pretty generic. And again; bread-sliced, but thicker, 'doorsteps'!

The ladder for the fire-engine is particularly crude and home-made looking, from scraps, compared to the farm fencing (previous post), this looks like it was made by a monkey, and not a pink-one! Ignoring the cars, this ladder would appear to be trying to take us back from 1950, to 1945 or even late-war - and it could be old stock?

The yacht is equally home-made in appearance, we whittled this sort of thing from lumps of fir-bark when we were kids - a penknife and a cocktail stick; you were captain of your own vessel!

However, the little train has been finished to exactly the same quality as the trains being sold by these companies today (another point I made in that old post on the subject - the timelessness of a lot of this stuff), having had a proper sanding and a polished-gloss finish; compare with the saw-marks and roughness of the fire-engine.

This would be pushing our date the other way, closer to '54/55 maybe? By this time the likes of Koho, Manurba and Siku were filling shelves with the multiple colours of their shiny, 'dimestore' polymer toys and novelties, so this is a strictly erzgebirge view we're taking here!

Even the picket-fence is better finished than the fire-ladder, with a formal, factory-imposed geometry lacking from the scraps used on the ladder. If I had to narrow it down (at gunpoint), I think a fair stab at a date for this set is 1952? . . . ish!

Again the close-up reveals a roughness you wouldn't get now, and (as far as I know) didn't get before the war, although some wartime plywood WHW's such as the 'DRK collector children' - are the same poorly finished splinter-risks!

The boat is par-for-the-course size wise, but the lorry/truck is a little on the big size compared to the other examples I've seen - both old and modern? But then I suppose it's no larger than the little two-horse/two-axle wagons you find?