In December 1994, a toy bear with cinnamon-colored fur was sold at Christie's in London for £110,000. The bear, known as Teddy Girl, had been made in 1904 as a child's toy. What, then, were the bidders paying for?
Part of the answer lies in the maker. Teddy Girl came from Steiff, the German firm whose designer, Richard Steiff, created a toy bear with movable arms and legs in 1902. When the design was shown at the Leipzig trade fair the following year, an American buyer ordered 3,000 of them, and other companies soon began to imitate the firm's bears. In 1904, Steiff therefore started fixing a small metal button in the ear of each toy. For a collector, that button serves as proof of origin.
A famous maker is not sufficient, however. Collectors also weigh how scarce a model is and how well an example has been preserved. Scarcity can be extreme: of the 3,000 bears ordered at Leipzig, not one is known to exist. Condition matters as well, since a bear whose fur has thinned or been repaired will usually sell for less.
The final consideration is provenance, the documented history of who has owned an object. Teddy Girl had belonged to a single owner from his infancy until his death, and that history was well recorded. Such a past cannot be manufactured afterward, which is precisely why buyers pay for it.
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