Treat Yourself to Vintage Halloween Collectibles

Halloween is now the most popular commercial holiday after Christmas. The National Retail Federation predicts sales this year will be 10% higher than last year, with total spending topping $5 billion on just candy, decorations and greeting cards.

As a holiday, Halloween came into its own in the early 1920s, when parties were primarily for adults. Guests would play mah-jongg, bridge or other games on the occasion, and winners would receive prizes to take home, such as candy boxes, lanterns or noisemakers -- which, combined with the festive paper die-cut decorations, make for highly collectible items today.

(The practice of going door-to-door for candy actually didn't come into vogue until after World War II, when Halloween morphed into a holiday mainly for children.)

The zenith of Halloween items both in variety and design was from about 1919 until 1935, when American discounters such as Woolworth's and Kresge encouraged expert German artisans to craft unique items for the growing American holiday market.

Many of the lanterns, candy containers and figures from this period were made in homes or very small firms, from either a fixed design or a mold, and all were hand-decorated. The overall quantity of items produced was quite small, resulting in a limited supply of these spooky treasures today.

What to Look For

The hierarchy of Halloween collectible imagery has always been fairly logical: The pumpkin, or its anthropomorphic incarnation, the jack-o'-lantern, is the most common symbol of the holiday. Black cats, skeletons and owls appear frequently, followed by witches, bats and, more rarely, devils.

For collectibles, within any given genre, this means devil imagery is the hardest to find -- and often it commands the highest prices.

There were two premier American die-cut and party-supply manufacturers in the prime production era: the Beistle Company of Shippensburg, Pa., and the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Framingham, Mass., both of which are still in business today.

Collectors can look for a mark on some of the better die-cuts from about 1940 through the early 1950s, such as "H.E. Luhrs," which was used exclusively by the Beistle Company. Beistle is known for its very detailed die-cuts, lanterns and table decorations.