If you were raised in the country as a child, collecting vintage toys of the farm variety can bring back your fondest memories. You can find all kinds of vintage farm toys, including those that are considered antiques. In fact, you can find some of the antique farm toys that date back to the late 1800′s, but more than likely, they will be metal or die-cast models from the early 1900′s.
There will be several scale sizes of replicas you can choose from because they would commonly make vintage farm equipment and trucks at 1/25, 1/32 or 1/43 of actual size. Some vintage farm toy makers offered different scales, like Ertl farm toys, which offered 1/16, 1/32, 1/50 and 1/64 precision scale farm toys. This made it easy for kids to figure out the actual size of the real thing. For example, if you owned a one-foot high John Deere replica tractor that was 1/16, that meant the real farm equipment would be 16 feet high. For the serious antique farm toy collector, Ertl farm toys offered the Precision Classics line of die-cast farm equipment.
When you have decided to collect vintage toys from the variety of antique toy farm equipment you will find, there are all kinds of actual pieces of equipment that were used on the farm, including cotton gins and hay or wheat threshers. Horse-drawn plows, farm trucks and all kinds of metal-constructed machinery can be found on the Internet auction websites. If you happen to run across a piece of antique toy farm equipment and you don’t know what it is, chances are it could be rare and worth some money, but you might want to investigate using online price guides and reference books on vintage toys or farm toys.
If you think about all the original farm equipment dealers of real equipment, you will find vintage toys that are made to duplicate them, in detail. Some of the famous names, like toy Farmall or Case tractors, Allis Chalmers Combines or Threshers and Ford Farm Trucks and Caterpillar Tractors are just a few of the vintage toys you might find. When you are searching the auction websites, like eBay, you are likely to find many different farm equipment manufacturers represented.
Die-cast farm toys were common and vintage John Deere or New Holland farm toys are some other names you might find. The fact that there are so many different manufacturers allows you to consider a special collection of your favorite manufacturer or the type of antique toy farm equipment you are most interested in, with replicas from a number of different manufacturers.
When you are collecting vintage toys, from “down on the farm”, don’t forget to think about some of the antique toy farm accessories that are available, including a wooden barn or miniature hay bales and even collectible toy farm animals can make your display more life-like. There are many different types of collectible farm animals to consider, including horses, cows, pigs and even chickens! If you were raised in the country, but turned out to be a “city slicker” in your adult life, you can bring back childhood memories with vintage toys like antique toy farm equipment or accessories.
