Faithful Collectors Are Bullish on Teddy Bear Market

Ranked as the fourth biggest hobby behind stamps, dolls and coins, teddy bear collecting is growing. And, while collectors buy contemporary bears, many soon get hooked on finding the old fellows. No doubt, antique teddy bears are an endangered species.

One hunter of old teddy bears is Donna Lee Harrison. After eight years retailing, hunting and promoting the stuffed animals, she is now a teddy bear broker, one of about six in the United States.

An energetic, friendly woman who wears bear jewelry and drives a van with license plates reading TEDDY B, she has a personal collection of about 500 teddy bears in all sizes, shapes, colors and vintages.

Her initial purchase was very small.

“I was at a doll show and saw a doll holding this little tiny bear, a 3 1/2-inch Steiff. I didn’t want the doll, but I loved that little bear,” says Harrison. “And I paid $25 for him in 1980--originally these miniatures sold for about 50 cents a dozen--and I just sold him last year for $1,200 to pay for my mother’s 70th birthday party.”

As a teddy specialist, Harrison buys and sells bears on commission for a growing list of teddy bear collectors in this country and abroad.

As owner of Donna’s Bear and Toy Mart in Hampden, she keeps one eye on her shelves and antique cabinets filled with sellable bears and one eye on her computer screen to determine who wants what on the bear market.

While Harrison buys and sells contemporary limited-edition teddy bears and artist bears designed and handmade by professional craftspeople, she specializes in antique bears. These old teddy bears can command prices of up to $10,000, a top price paid by a major collector for a prized 1903 Steiff bear found by Harrison at an auction.

Harrison has antique bears in her office ranging in value from about $250 for a 1920s German bear to $8,500 for a rare 1907 Steiff.

A major business problem, however, is the scarcity of old bears on the market and the great number of bear hunters. Chuck Gill, a spokesman for Cumberland’s Hobby House Press, publisher of the magazine Teddy Bear and Friends, reports that there are an estimated half-million teddy bear collectors in the United States.

Harrison says the dearth of old bears is understandable, considering the perishable quality of the mohair, excelsior and other materials used to make them. But, more important, early teddy bears were toys. The teddy bear was involved in the nitty-gritty of play, including forays through deep, dark mud puddles, climbs in the highest of back-yard trees, romps through dangerous woods, and frolics at special picnics or high teas.

Plus, Harrison says, “many people literally loved their teddies to death.”

So to find antique bears, she travels to the big London auction houses three times a year, scouts flea markets, antiques stores and attics, especially in Germany and England, employs “pickers,” people who will search when she is not available, and attends shows, conventions and estate sales.

She is also constantly viewing and reviewing teddy bear collections. And, while she does buy some younger bears, she is basically looking for bears made before World War II.

“Traditionally, an item has to be almost 100 years old to be classified as an antique, and there are just not any teddy bears that old,” says Harrison. “So, generally, we consider any bear made before 1940 to be an antique.”

How far back do teddy bears go?

According to Pat Schoonmaker in “A Collector’s History of the Teddy Bear,” Indian children in north-central Arizona played with a bearlike toy. But bears really didn’t surface as toys until the mid-1800s, when mechanical bears became popular and bears started showing up in stories and drawings for children.

However, as of 1900, the true teddy bear toy, a jointed, huggable creature of fur and filling, had not appeared on the scene.

So where did the little guy (David Worland, a walking encyclopedia of the bear facts and owner of the largest collection of teddy bears in Australia, insists that all teddy bears are boys) come from?

While there is running debate on the nationality of great-great-grandteddy, the year of his birth is definitely 1902, Schoonmaker says. She believes that the first bear toy was designed that year by Richard Steiff, nephew of Margarete Steiff, who founded the Steiff toy empire in Giengen, Germany. By 1903, the Steiff company was shipping bears, or “Bruins,” as they were called, to America.

But another event in 1902 challenges the Germanic origin of the first teddy bear. In that year, President Theodore Roosevelt went to Smedes, Miss., to settle a boundary dispute and hunt some bear. On the last day of the trip, the President was bearless. Accompanying hunters found an old, sick bear, tethered it to a tree and invited Roosevelt to shoot it. He refused, supposedly saying that to do such a thing would be unsportsmanlike and would upset his children.

Clifford Berryman, a political cartoonist of the day, drew a cartoon showing Roosevelt refusing to shoot the bear. The cartoon was so popular that Berryman continued to draw a small bear whenever he drew a Roosevelt cartoon. Within months, Roosevelt and the bear were forever linked.

Morris Michtom, a Russian immigrant who owned a confectionary shop in Brooklyn, saw marketing opportunities in Roosevelt’s bear. He designed a plush bear cub, had wife Rosa stitch it up, and displayed it in his store window. The toy bear was an instant sensation. Within months of the 1902 bear-hunting incident in Mississippi, Michtom was in business as the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co.--later the Ideal Toy Co.--making bears.

And, although there is no written documentation, the Michtom family says that Morris sent a sample bear to Roosevelt along with a letter asking for permission to use his nickname, “Teddy.” Roosevelt approved.

World War I brought an end to bear mania until 1969, when the late British actor Peter Bull published “The Teddy Bear Book” and suddenly teddy bears and teddy bear collecting became fashionable again. Bear lovers began coming out of the closet, dragging their much-loved teddy bears with them.

Since then the price increases have been phenomenal, according to Dee Hockenberry, author of three books on teddy bears and collecting.

“It is nothing for collectors to pay between $2,500 and $10,000 for a special antique bear,” she says.

While it is hard to say what bear will bring what price, Hockenberry votes for pre-1910 Steiff bears, considered the creme de la creme. She says large bears, up to about 36 inches tall, and those in excellent condition--no mohair loss, original eyes, only minor holes in pads--usually bring the most money. But, she adds, “the face is very important.”

Worland is a great believer in bear faces. Known as the “teddy bear man of Australia,” he has a personal collection of between 100 and 200 bears, valued at about $100,000, and all residing comfortably in the bear room at his home in Sydney.

“I don’t care how rare or old a bear is,” says Worland, “if the face isn’t nice, isn’t great, I don’t want it.”

Worland has a bear bragger’s book with pictures of some of his antique bears. They include Mullins, Barrington and Harrison, the latter a 1903 bear bought from Donna Harrison and known as “the oldest bear in Australia.” All three are Steiffs, bought at different times over the last few years for a collective price of $14,500, and are now worth about $20,000.