Antiques Rail Road Show

          Occasionally I will drop in on the television program Antiques Roadshow.  I am fascinated to hear the experts identify items that people have brought in and often quite surprised at the appraised values quoted for some of these items.  I doubt whether I have any of the real treasures like those shown on Antiques Roadshow, but I do have some oddities about which I am curious.  Perhaps one of the readers may be able to tell me about the item I present today.

Train Bookends: Main display view

 

            This pair of black locomotive bookends is made of what I would presume to be called plaster, but may be ceramic.  They are painted with a dull black finish trimmed in gold with red and white accent colors.  The bookends have gold colored lettering that says "Japan". The bookends measure 3 in. high, 1 3/4 in. wide and 6 in. long.   They are hollow with green felt on the bottoms.

             I have seen somewhat similar bookends on websites, but those are described as having a glossy paint finish.  Also I have not seen any with the coal car included as with the ones I have.  The ones on the websites have been priced at anywhere between $5.99 and $35.00--not anything like those prices on the things they show on television.   I probably wouldn't ever want to sell them (unless I was offered more than was worth keeping them to collect dust), but I'd like to know their history.

 
 

              I do have the personal history as was told to me.  I was given these by my grandmother in the mid-1980s when she was having an estate sale so she could move out of her grand home in Morgantown , West Virginia and into my aunt's home, which was in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.   She gave a few items to her daughters and her grandchildren rather than sell them.  These would have been items that had some special value to each of us.
 

The normally unseen opposite side of the locomotive.

View from the top (note hole in smokestack)

               The story concerning the train bookends was that they were supposedly a gift I had given to my grandfather when I was a child.   I had chosen this gift because he had once worked on the railroad and also in the coal mines.   The trains had the appearance that they were made out of coal.  This is what I was told when the bookends were given to me by my mother.

                This would probably have been in the 1950s and since I would have been quite young, my mother would have actually purchased these and attributed the gift as coming from me.  Since the markings on the ends indicate that they were made in Japan, it seems like that these would have been made in the 1950s.  I don't remember giving these to my grandfather, but that's not surprising under the circumstances.   My mother no longer remembers where these came from either, but she says she recalls having seen them displayed in my grandparents' house.

View of the front ends of the locomotives.

                A few years ago I dug these out of a box and put them out on a bookshelf in our living room, where they currently remain on display.  This pair of bookends is so lightweight that it really wouldn't be practical to use them as bookends, but they sit there in mute testimony to a mysterious past.

Inside portion that would rest against the books.
Note "Japan" in gold at the bottom.

Enlargement of the "Japan" signature    
 

                 Do you ever watch Antiques Roadshow?   Do you own anything that might be worthy of appearing on the show?   Do you have any special oddities like my trains that you wish you knew more about?    Can you recall when the term "Made in Japan" was negative, and sometimes even an insult?  Can anyone tell me anything about my bookends?