20th-Century Steiff Dinosaur

Appraised on: August 11, 2001

Appraised in: New Orleans, Louisiana

Appraised by: Richard Wright

Category: Dolls

Episode Info: Tomorrow's Antiques (#917)

Originally Aired: September 26, 2005

IMAGE: 1 of 1  

Appraisal Video: (1:38)

GUEST: Well, this is a dinosaur that really belongs to my son, who had it when he was just a child in the mid-'50s. It's been living in our basement all these years, and we didn't take particular good care of it, although it was in a safe spot, so it stood up pretty well. My father was in a wholesale toy business, and we used to go to New York every year to the toy fair. And so Donald asked him to bring him back a dinosaur, and this is it.

APPRAISER: Oh really? When I was a kid in the '50s, I loved dinosaurs, too. I actually had one of these things. Mine was a lot smaller. This is a pretty large model of this thing. Where was your toy store in New Orleans?

GUEST: Right off of Canal Street, the main street in New Orleans, on Charter Street. It was wholesale, of course. We sold a lot of stuffed animals, too, but this is a Steiff, and it's a higher quality than the kind of thing that we normally carried.

APPRAISER: Oh, yeah, it's definitely Steiff, nice condition, nice face. And Steiff made quite a few of these things. There's different models-- brontosaurus and there's a stegosaurus and there's... The one I had was Tyrannosaurus Rex. My Tyrannosaurus Rex was only about that big. And they also made a Tyrannosaurus Rex which stood, I think, about eight feet high. They made a pterodactyl. Have you ever had this appraised?

GUEST: Never have, no.

APPRAISER: On today's market, if this guy was in real, real, mint, mint shape-- he's not mint, he's in good shape-- he would probably be around the, oh, $2,000 to $2,500 range. Now, this is played with, tags are gone, but he's still in great shape. You're probably looking at $1,000, maybe up to $2,000.