Articles & Features

2003 Review - The year in crayons

2003 was a pretty good year for crayons. Probably not quite as big as 2002 as that year surfaced some real rare Binney & Smith items. For me personally, a couple of significant collections were acquired yielding many not-seen-on-ebay crayons. 2003 also saw the 100^th year celebration of the Crayola and with it the introduction of the “Colors of Binney & Smith” commemorative tin that was only given out to every employee for 2003. While that would yield a fair amount of these tins, the demand on ebay went crazy on this item with numerous auctions going well over $100 and even over $200 early on.

The top 10 crayon auctions for 2003 were:

01 – Roy Rogers Crayon Set $565 (Jan 2003)

02 – Brodhaven Wooden Container of Man with Green Hat $208 (Nov 2003)

03 – Colors of Binney & Smith Employee Tin $208 (Dec 2003)

04 – Crayola Drawing Set of 72 colors – The white version still seales $205 (Jan 2003)

05 – Crayola Rob Roy Coloring Box $200 (Jan 2003)

06 – Cerata Color Box No 520 (May 2003)

07 – Transogram Gold Medal Giant Playset with 3 different crayon caddies inside $181 (Oct 2003)

08 – Lassie Crayon-By-Number $185 (Feb 2003)

09 – Crayola Birdland Color Set from 1925 $165 (Jun 2003)

10 – Transogram Mickey Mouse Donald Duck Mint tin of crayons $158 (Aug 2003)

The Roy Rogers fetched a crayon auction high price record but only because it had been signed by Roy and the western collectors were doing all the high bidding. The Brodhaven containers are wooden figurines from the 1920s and 1930s with hand painted faces and clothing. They held crayons same as any wooden canister of the time. They have become a very desirable subset of collecting and always fetch at least $50 for virtually any example of one. The Cerata box is quite the rare Binney & Smith box and this was the second time it changed hands in less than a year. The Transogram Gold Medal is not Binney & Smith as Transogram used that same label for years too. This was a huge box that had many unique crayon caddies all in one. The Lassie crayon-by-number got into a bidding war between Lassie collectors and the crayon-by-number collectors who always bid very high to get what they want. The Crayola Birdland Color set is a truly rare item. The colors sets, while there were many different ones that Binney & Smith did, represent some of the hardest to find crayon items to find.