Vintage Kingsbury Manufacturing Postal Scale ca 1940!
There are 10 of these for sale today on eBay. Why should you by mine?
Because (1) mine is NOT in “rough condition”;
Because (2) I am a “Kingsbury” and I collected this sample because it was my namesake;
Because (3) Most of the eBay listings characterize the scale as “advertising” and I know that it was made for its clear purpose: To use as a postage scale! [See the footnote below.]
Because (4) This sample is still useful as a postage scale! Sure, stamps cost 66ç today and not the 3ç that was current when this scale was made: but an ounce is still an ounce!
And (5) Because I am selling this little treasure to raise monies, not for myself (following 50 years of Federal Civil Service, I have a splendid pension.)
My husband (of 57 years!) and I are deaccessioning our STUFF and using ALL the proceeds to help the “breadwinners“ of four families who used to work with us before we retired, and who lost income due to covid since then!
We appreciate your reading this, and they will appreciate your buying this STILL useful postage Scale!
The pictures describe it.
It is made of steel.
It is 3 ¼” tall; 3 ¼” deep; 1 ¾” wide.
It will fit on your desk and work ACCURATELY up to 12 ounces!
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Footnotes: History [Quotes from the internet]
Kingsbury Toys, USA
The toy making all began in a one-story wooden building in Keene [NH], in 1890, with James Wilkins who produced full-size clothes wringers at his Triumph Wringer Company (the original name of his company). When a miniature version of the wringer became popular, he decided to move his business to making toys. He began with cast iron fire engines and trains, and later Kingsbury largely expanded on what Wilkins had originally started.
Harry Thayer Kingsbury, of Keene in New Hampshire, was a 25-year-old bicycle shop owner with a talent for mechanics. He purchased the toy making business from James Wilkins in 1894. Ruggedness, power, and beauty were the qualities boasted of by the Kingsbury Toy Company, and the variety of things they made covers steamboats, airplanes, military trucks, farm equipment, zeppelins, buses, cars, postal scales, automated coin banks, garden tools and castiron stoves.
Kingsbury used to demonstrate his toys’ durability through advertising. One advert shows three men standing on a firetruck as a test of its strength, another test showed the strength of the toy vehicles’ rubber tyres, which were advertised as being “volcanized to steel disc wheels” that wouldn’t scratch or come off. After the wheels were turned for the equivalent of 3,500 miles, only one-third of the tyre had worn away. Despite having seen these adverts referred to by several sources, I have yet to see them myself.
Kingsbury did more than make high-quality toys — the company was also on the cutting edge of technology. The construction of the mini-machines paralleled what was happening in the industries of the full-scale versions. For example, look at the Kingsbury company’s line of toy Chrysler Airflow cars from the 1930s — when Chrysler came out with a new model each year, they passed on the specifications to Kingsbury Toys, before they went on sale, so they could get started duplicating them in miniature for their toy line. In 1930, Kingsbury announced that all Kingsbury passenger cars were now being designed and built with "Bodies by Fisher", just as the real cars of the day were supplied. Kingsbury's automotive toys were released with battery-operated lights in 1931.
Kingsbury also made a range of race cars that were exact reproductions of the cars driven by record holders. The sleek, bullet-like Golden Arrow racer, circa 1930 and finished in bright gold and bronze paint like the original, is a model of a car Henry Segrave (later Sir Henry Segrave) used to set the land speed record of 231.45 miles per hour. The model was made under his approval and was endorsed by him.
The company’s toy airplanes also followed developments in air travel, from the Zeppelins to the tri-motor airplanes of the 1930s.
The most significant feature of Kingsbury toys, that sets them apart from today’s toys, is that they not only look like exact replicas of the real thing, many work like exact replicas. A Silver Arrow cabin model airplane with a wing span of 22 inches, was advertised as being able to fly 150 to 300 feet high, a sprinkler farm wagon sprinkles when filled with water, and a mowing machine has a blade that moves back and forth as it is pulled along. There is even a motorboat that takes off in the water when you pull the string at the rear.
Kingsbury toys originally cost from 50 cents to $30. What many collectors enjoy the most about them – especially the farm toys – is how they are accurate down to the smallest of details. “They are faithful in every way to the real thing, from the way the harness is cast onto the horse to the way the wagon is hitched.” said one collector in a press review. Today collectors will pay up to, and in excess of, $1,500 for a single toy.
The Kingsbury Toy Company made toys through to 1942, when steel became scarce during World War II and the company began manufacturing machine tools. After the war, the toy tooling was sold to the Keystone Manufacturing Company of Boston, Massachusetts. The Kingsbury company continued manufacturing, mainly for the automotive industry.
In 1998 the company was purchased by Iris A. Mitropoulis, who kept operations going, even in times of extreme hardship. Kingsbury Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2011, in the wake of the financial crisis and attorneys representing the Kingsbury Corporation, filed a notice in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manchester on Jan. 8 2013, adjourning an auction of the company’s 300,000-square-foot facility and associated land at 80 Laurel Street. The auction was originally scheduled for Jan. 10, 2013. Efforts to sell the company and its assets appear to have continued right up until 2019.
“In 1894, Keene [NH] resident Harry T. Kingsbury purchased the [Wilkins Toy] company and, within one year, produced the first toy catalog illustrating 85 iron toys. These included 21 different trains, one of them a mechanical wind-up model, and 16 pieces of fire equipment. Other toys included cook stoves, circus toys, steamboats, trolleys, delivery wagons, and passenger carriages and wagons of various kinds.
Kingsbury’s company soon became a leader in the American toy manufacturing industry, making and shipping toys across the country. The company made toys for boys and girls, producing some of the first toy automobiles with lady drivers. Using clockworks-style technology in his vehicles, Kingsbury’s trains and fire trucks and other vehicles could be wound up and let go to drive across the room.
In the 1920s, an employee at Kingsbury Mfg., developed a variable speed drill that could more easily drill through the metal frames of the toys. It became so popular that the company opened a machine tool division and began selling tools to competitors.
During World War II, Kingsbury ceased its manufacture of toys to help with the war effort; they were making rifle bolts. Following the war, the company never returned to the manufacture of toys, but became a world leader in the machine tool industry and a leading employer in Keene. Changes in the industry caused decline and the company was sold to a Rochester, NY, firm in 2012. The last remnants of the business left the region in 2016.
“Kingsbury Machine Tool emerged during World War II when the government asked EJ Kingsbury to transform his metal toy manufacturing company into a maker of machine tools to help the war effort. His daughter Sally Kingsbury worked in Washington during the war. She married Hank Frechette, and EJ Kingsbury passed the company to him in 1963. Between 1963 and his death in 1976, Hank Frechette grew the company three-fold and made it one of the premier manufacturers of automated components of assembly lines. By 1983, Jim Koontz was managing the firm through an unimaginably fierce downturn in machine tools which put most Connecticut River Valley machine tool manufacturers out of business. Tensions erupted between machinists and management, yet dedication to the firm united them and Kingsbury held on tenaciously until 1998. In that year, the firm was sold to Iris Mitropolous who had a holding company Ventura Industries whose sole business was Kingsbury Machine Tool. By 2012, Ventura was still in business but Kingsbury had declared bankruptcy. That was a sad day for Keene, New Hampshire. ”