First Post!

    Hello and welcome to my blog on Collecting Bears. Whether you are a newcomer to Bear collecting or a long term addict you are part of a worldwide special interest group that will bring you friends and contacts wherever you are.

    As a long-term bear collector I like all kinds of Bears and soft toys  but my particular preference is for older bears and stuffed toys from the early 1900s-1960s  when they were popular brands  and designs, hand-finished with glass eyes and firm stuffing.  
    
    I handle a great many  bears and soft toys in my work  which, in a nutshell,  is really an eternal search to rescue and re-home the  vintage and  increasingly rare bears that may well be  the last examples of their maker's art. 

     I always feel a sense of awe when I pick up a 70 year old Bear or Stuffed Toy .What a long life that innocent toy has managed to survive to reach my hands and I wonder about the conditions it has endured , all the hands it has passed through and all the events it has witnessed from its place on a shelf or a bed.
Quite remarkably, well -made toys do survive the attentions of their young owners and emerge relatively unscathed to become collectors items almost by accident, though a few are fast-tracked into collections by being kept forever new in their original packaging and never allowed to be played with.

    Which ever route is taken to a collection, the bears and toys in question deserve our utmost admiration for having survived all the potential ravages of time and the unforseen risks from predators, moth, dust, pet-hair, cigarette-smoke, damp , sunlight or water damage, house-removals and changes of owners etc. 

    As the older bears become rarer, our demands for pristine standards of appearance are scaled back and we recognise that fraility is part of the charm, the over-exuberant play leading to  torn ears and lost eyes, the wear and the balding patches where the mohair has been hugged to extinction, removal of ID tags and labels on safety grounds, and the intermittent squeak of a once lusty growl are obvious signs of a long well-loved bear.(My favourite 10-inch blind bear came from a German collector who sadly died before being able to give its history,but the many and differently-worked neat darns on its paws are evidence of a highly-prized bear which it is a pleasure for me to keep.)

    So whether you inherit or acquire a uniquely two-tone bear faded by the sun or a bear with various Mummy repairs to limbs and a wobbly head you can be sure that none of this matters in the total scheme of things, because in the end it is like a race in which old bears and toys compete with each other to be the very last example of their maker's work, and so the issue we need to consider as Collectors,  is not so much what has brought them to this point but how will they survive in future!

    So everytime I handle a bear, and pack it up to go to its new home, I am struck by the thought that this bear in my hand might be the one that goes on to become one of  the final survivors of its particular make or type  and I feel a little thrill that I have briefly owned it, and  in a small way- helped it on its way in the great race....