Bonzo cartoon dog by Steiff – €33,000 (£27,700) at Ladenburger Spielzeugauktion.
German saleroom Ladenburger Spielzeugauktion (24% buyer’s premium) described its November 6 sale as the company’s “largest exclusively Steiff sale of all time” with a 100% sell-through rate.
It offered “pre-war teddy bears, archive and one-of-a-kind rarities, cloth dolls, pristine midcentury exemplars, and other premier button-in-ear Steiff treasures from museum-quality collections from the US and Europe”.
Shown above is one of the top performers in Ladenburg: a fully jointed, hand-painted velvet Bonzo cartoon dog with IDs and its original Steiff archive tag.
Soft toy versions of the cartoon dog, the creation of English author GE Studdy, were made in large numbers by Chad Valley under a licensing agreement. However, this 9in (23cm) tall Bonzo from 1927 is one of only 115 samples produced by Steiff in seven different sizes.
Estimated at €12,000-24,000, it took €33,000 (£27,700).
