Overnight the rain moved in, and by the time the sale opened the next morning, most of the old toys were a little damp. That didn't stop the shoppers from looking through the cardboard boxes, though.
I looked in a box of old dolls at this sale, and spotted a small, familiar face: Ginny. I brought her home and found some doll clothes and shoes for her in a bag of toys I'd found at another estate sale. I put little Ginny with the wrapped Christmas presents on my sideboard, waiting to be placed under the tree.
Seeing this Ginny doll waiting patiently for the Christmas tree to be set up, reminded me of the blog post I wrote about some other Ginny dolls I found at an estate sale, last year:
A Ginny Doll for Christmas
I couldn't resist buying the 1956 Christmas catalogs from at an estate sale. Someone had carefully saved them in a box with her other Christmas stuff.
In the 1950s, the Christmas season didn't start to arrive in mid-July, like it does today. It started after Thanksgiving, heralded by the postman delivering Christmas catalogs to the family's home address.
Certainly there were ads on television, and ads on the radio, and ads in the newspaper and magazines at Christmastime. But nothing quite compared with the arrival of the Christmas catalog. Catalogs from Sears, Montgomery Wards, Western Auto, W.T. Grant, and regional stores like the May Company and Rex's in Southern California were passed from child to child to parent, to be pored over for hours on end. (And no doubt Santa was watching the child's every move.)
No matter what its source, the Christmas catalog was filled with the stuff that a child's dreams were made of, in mid-century America. As I leafed carefully through the pages of the May Co. catalog (the paper was, after all, nearly 60 years old!), one page in particular caught my attention:
Ginny.
I never had a Ginny doll, when I was a kid. Her first heyday was a little before my time. My friend Linda, who's a bit older than I am, remembers having a Ginny when she was a girl. Ginny -- who predates Barbie by several years -- was made by an American toy manufacturer called Vogue.
The Vogue Dolls website gives the official history of Ginny. She was the creation of Jennie Adler Graves, who had begun making and selling doll clothing in the 1920s. By the late 1940s, Graves had moved from dressing other makers' dolls to creating her own line:
One of the hardest lessons to learn as a kid, is that you don't always get what you asked for at Christmas. Sometimes your heart's desire is outside your parents' budget. Sometimes your parents don't understand why you "have to have" that one special toy. And so you wait.
But take heart, young gift-seeker: it's never too late to find a nice old toy. Just be patient. When you're older, and no one else can tell you how to spend your disposable income, you can decide whether you still have to have that one special toy you wanted as a kid.
I know this because I found a whole grocery bag full of Ginnys and their clothes and shoes and accessories at another estate sale a few weeks ago. The lady who bought one of them from me on eBay told me she's 60 years old and she's finally getting her Ginny doll.
Just in time for Christmas.
(Yes, we'll look more closely at the insides of those old Christmas catalogs in future blog posts. Stay tuned.)
___________________________________________
The website GinnyDoll.com has lots of information on collectible Ginny: her history, face and body types and more:
http://www.dollinfo.com/Ginny/ginnyhome.htm
Vogue Dolls is still in business; their website gives more on the history of Ginny, her family and friends:
http://www.voguedolls.com/History.htm
In the 1950s, the Christmas season didn't start to arrive in mid-July, like it does today. It started after Thanksgiving, heralded by the postman delivering Christmas catalogs to the family's home address.
Certainly there were ads on television, and ads on the radio, and ads in the newspaper and magazines at Christmastime. But nothing quite compared with the arrival of the Christmas catalog. Catalogs from Sears, Montgomery Wards, Western Auto, W.T. Grant, and regional stores like the May Company and Rex's in Southern California were passed from child to child to parent, to be pored over for hours on end. (And no doubt Santa was watching the child's every move.)
No matter what its source, the Christmas catalog was filled with the stuff that a child's dreams were made of, in mid-century America. As I leafed carefully through the pages of the May Co. catalog (the paper was, after all, nearly 60 years old!), one page in particular caught my attention:
Ginny.
I never had a Ginny doll, when I was a kid. Her first heyday was a little before my time. My friend Linda, who's a bit older than I am, remembers having a Ginny when she was a girl. Ginny -- who predates Barbie by several years -- was made by an American toy manufacturer called Vogue.
The Vogue Dolls website gives the official history of Ginny. She was the creation of Jennie Adler Graves, who had begun making and selling doll clothing in the 1920s. By the late 1940s, Graves had moved from dressing other makers' dolls to creating her own line:
Success followed success until 1948, when a sales dip in her line of existing dolls inspired Mrs. Graves to introduce an 8" plastic doll, the forerunner to Ginny. Store owners and consumers alike loved the new doll, and in 1951, Ginny was officially born, named after Jennie's daughter Virginia. From a point in 1949 where a 15,000 square foot warehouse was needed and Vogue employed 50 regular workers plus from 100 to 200 home sewers and did a sales volume of $239,000 a year, Vogue grew to a point in 1953 where annual volume reached $2,113,904. Ginny's success was assured.
Ginny was so popular that many tried to emulate her, and an entire group of 8" dolls appeared on the market in anticipation of securing some of the Vogue business and Ginny fans. By 1957, Ginny had reached over five million dollars per year in sales, and was a beloved fixture in most American households.
One of the hardest lessons to learn as a kid, is that you don't always get what you asked for at Christmas. Sometimes your heart's desire is outside your parents' budget. Sometimes your parents don't understand why you "have to have" that one special toy. And so you wait.
But take heart, young gift-seeker: it's never too late to find a nice old toy. Just be patient. When you're older, and no one else can tell you how to spend your disposable income, you can decide whether you still have to have that one special toy you wanted as a kid.
I know this because I found a whole grocery bag full of Ginnys and their clothes and shoes and accessories at another estate sale a few weeks ago. The lady who bought one of them from me on eBay told me she's 60 years old and she's finally getting her Ginny doll.
Just in time for Christmas.
(Yes, we'll look more closely at the insides of those old Christmas catalogs in future blog posts. Stay tuned.)
___________________________________________
The website GinnyDoll.com has lots of information on collectible Ginny: her history, face and body types and more:
http://www.dollinfo.com/Ginny/ginnyhome.htm
Vogue Dolls is still in business; their website gives more on the history of Ginny, her family and friends:
http://www.voguedolls.com/History.htm
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