Lehmann

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Ernest Lehmann Co. history

Brandenberg, Germany, 1881 (Re-established in 1951 in Nuremberg and still producing toys).
Ernest P. Lehmann exported large quantities of toys to the USA from 1895 to 1929. Specialized in mechanical transportation and lithographed tinplate. Some of the most famous Lehmannn's include: Autobus, Dancing Sailor and Icarus.

The company distinguished itself in the early part of the 20th-century by producing small, lightweight tin toys that were more affordable than those the competition produced. In the early 1900s, many competitors were making far heavier iron toys.

Easy to Identify

One of the nice things about Lehmann toys is that collectors don't have to worry much about fakes, a feature that separates them from most other antiques and collectibles. All their toys have the Lehmann logo: an "e" surrounded by a bell or the name itself embossed on it.

The Lehmann toys that are most attractive to collectors today were made from the early 1900s through about 1950, a period when thousands of Lehmann toys were distributed the world over by a company that employed 800 people at its peak. In 1948, the company was confiscated by Russian occupiers, and the toys made after that date don't have the same cache as earlier ones, even though a cousin to the founder restarted the family business in 1951 in what had become West Germany.