Finding Vintage Disneyana

Vintage Disneyana has become a personal passion of mine.  I’ve been searching for it for years now.  I attend art auctions regularly, but usually only find vintage Disneyana at a small percentage of them.

I found a darling 1938 Knickerbocker Mickey Mouse dressed in a Santa suit at an art auction a few years ago.  This was an extraordinary vintage Disneyana find.  There was some very fine crazing to the face, but no flakes in the paint.

I did some research after the art auction and it turns out that my vintage Disneyana has quite a history.  This toy was a one of a kind Mickey Mouse toy made by Knickerbocker for a department store at Christmas and was given away for a contest.  I was happy that the beard was real wool fur.

I searched for several years at art auctions until I found a Mad Hatter china teapot.  This vintage Disneyana was made in 1951 by Regal for Disney.  I always loved Alice in Wonderland and this teapot was very special to me.

My love of vintage Disneyana runs through lots of mediums.  I buy figurines and paintings and anything else that strikes me as special while I’m at art auctions.  If something is really rare or unusual and still has a whimsical feel to it, I’ll try to win it.

I found a painting that I fell in love with.  It fit with my love of vintage Disneyana.  The painting was created in 1949 and depicted the Cinderella castle.  It was originally created for a Disney holiday card.  I won the painting for four thousand dollars and felt like I had gotten a great deal.

The old Disneyland maps have become very expensive pieces of vintage Disneyana.  I have been finding more of the old maps at art auctions, but they are usually not in good shape.  The nicest map I’ve found was from 1958, which is also the year I was born.

The 1958 map of Disneyland was the first one that was made poster sized.  The art auction I found this piece of vintage Disneyana at had numerous Disney lots up for auction that day.  I had not expected to find such a great item.  This map had been stored rolled and had never been folded.  I paid two thousand dollars for it and it was worth every penny.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was my little sister’s favorite movie when we were kids.  I look for vintage Disneyana that features it when I am art auctions.  The best item I’ve found for her was figurines from the 1950s that were of Snow White and six of the seven dwarfs.  There was one figurine missing, Sneezy.

My daughter has fallen in love with Bambi.  She had me buy her the DVD and she has watched it over and over again.  I was at an art auction and found a nice Bambi figurine while they were auctioning off vintage Disneyana.  I gave it to her for her last birthday and she says that it is her most prized possession!

I was shocked at an art auction that I attended that had a wonderful 1930s Mickey Mouse lamp and lampshade.  The art auction had not even advertised that they were auctioning vintage Disneyana.  If they had advertised this item, I know that more people would have come to the auction.  I won the lamp for five hundred dollars because I had no competition.

The most common vintage Disneyana that I find at art auctions is watches.  I don’t like watches.  I never buy any of the Disney watches.  I am usually disappointed when an art auction advertises vintage Disneyana and all they have up for auction is watches.

I bought an autographed Fantasia album at a vintage Disneyana sale.  The art auction had a lot of signed and autographed items and Disney items were among them.  The signatures on my vintage Disneyana included Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski (the conductor) and both of the original animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.  This was a fantastic find for my collection.