Re: Need ID help on old Cracker Jack prize
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 7:39 pm
HI ALL
I have used WD40 before on iron meteorites; it is really not a rust remover, but a preservative. It also soaks into the rust and evens out the color, which you can see in the below photo which I soaked in WD40. I usually remove light surface rust with a thick paste of baking soda and water that you rub around the surface with your finger and it will do little damage to the actual surface. Anything beyond that will start to remove what is left of the tin coating and once that happens the iron begins to rust. My piece will never look like Stewarts photo as the tin on the surface has already been damaged too much.
Removing the rust that is left will just end up leaving the surface with a lot of pits in it.
The value in this piece that I found is not in trying to restore it to like new condition; it is in the finding of the piece and what its history might have been. Did some child of a miner get a box of Cracker Jack from his father (even at 5 cents this was expensive for a miner in those days) and did he lose his prize while walking through the barren rocky hills around the mine. That to me is the value of this piece.
An additional note after I saw the manufacturers name in Stewart’s photo I started to do some searching and I think it might have been a company in Chicago, Vaughan Novelty Manufacturing Co. It started out in 1910 as the Crown Throat & Opener Company and sometime between then and 1919 it changed its name to Vaughan Novelty. One of its catalogs said that it produced “advertising novelties and premiums in metal”. Since Cracker Jack and Vaughan Novelty were both in Chicago it is possible that this was who produced the embossed spinner.
I am assuming that Vaughan Nov. Mfg. Co is Vaughan Novelty Manufacturing Co.
Are there other Cracker Jack prizes that are marked Vaughan Nov. Mfg. Co.?
I have used WD40 before on iron meteorites; it is really not a rust remover, but a preservative. It also soaks into the rust and evens out the color, which you can see in the below photo which I soaked in WD40. I usually remove light surface rust with a thick paste of baking soda and water that you rub around the surface with your finger and it will do little damage to the actual surface. Anything beyond that will start to remove what is left of the tin coating and once that happens the iron begins to rust. My piece will never look like Stewarts photo as the tin on the surface has already been damaged too much.
Removing the rust that is left will just end up leaving the surface with a lot of pits in it.
The value in this piece that I found is not in trying to restore it to like new condition; it is in the finding of the piece and what its history might have been. Did some child of a miner get a box of Cracker Jack from his father (even at 5 cents this was expensive for a miner in those days) and did he lose his prize while walking through the barren rocky hills around the mine. That to me is the value of this piece.
An additional note after I saw the manufacturers name in Stewart’s photo I started to do some searching and I think it might have been a company in Chicago, Vaughan Novelty Manufacturing Co. It started out in 1910 as the Crown Throat & Opener Company and sometime between then and 1919 it changed its name to Vaughan Novelty. One of its catalogs said that it produced “advertising novelties and premiums in metal”. Since Cracker Jack and Vaughan Novelty were both in Chicago it is possible that this was who produced the embossed spinner.
I am assuming that Vaughan Nov. Mfg. Co is Vaughan Novelty Manufacturing Co.
Are there other Cracker Jack prizes that are marked Vaughan Nov. Mfg. Co.?