Run! Run!
As fast as you can.
You can’t catch me,
I’m the gingerbread man!

The late author Jamie Gilson’s famous rhyme about this cute confection has been recited in elementary schools since its publication in 1981, but Christmas revelers with a sweet tooth have been eating gingerbread men for centuries.

Gingerbread

Gingerbread started as small cakes with honey – they didn’t contain ginger and they weren’t considered a type of bread. Historians believe the honeycakes were invented by the ancient Greeks or Romans, according to a Dec. 22, 2018, article on Time.com. A recipe for “gingerbread” in a 15th-century English cookbook had a chewy consistency, not unlike toffee. The recipe read, in part: “Take a quart of honey and seethe it and skin it clean. Rake saffron and powdered pepper and throw them on the honey. Take grated bread and moisten it. Combine honey with spices. Add cinnamon and cloves and make them into squares. If you want it to be red, color it with red sandalwood.”

Cookies in little men’s shapes

The cookies have been shaped like little men since the reign of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I in the 1500s. The queen had in her employ a royal gingerbread maker, who baked the cookies meant to represent members of Queen Elizabeth’s court. He then served the cookies at Her Majesty’s elaborate royal dinners. By the end of the century, bakers began using sugar in gingerbread instead of honey.
According to the Time article, around the same time, some who practiced folk medicine gave out cookies to young ladies in their village.
“If they could get the man of their choice to eat the gingerbread man that had been made for them, the idea was the man would then fall in love with the young woman,” Carole Levin, a historian with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says in the article.

According to another historian, Michael Krondl, gingerbread began to be associated with the Christmas season because of the belief that the cookie’s spices heat you up throughout the winter months.

By the 1700s, bakers began to add butter and cream to gingerbread recipes, and thus, the cookie started to resemble the gingerbread we know and love today.

The Christmas season

The Christmas season is a feast for the senses – watching the twinkle of colored light displays, the sound of tearing open wrapped gifts, and the smell and feel of a freshly decorated fir. And one affordable collectible helps bring the taste of Christmas to every kitchen – cookie cutters.

The tool found in every baker’s arsenal can be traced back roughly 700 years, to the 1400s, when they were invented in Italy and known as “imprint cutters.” Like many Christmas traditions, the imprint cutter evolved to become used widely in Germany and Holland, where housewives used them during the Christmas holiday to bake cookies in the shapes of doves, eagles, and human figures, according to Collectors Weekly. Those earliest cookie cutters were made of wood.

When they immigrated to the New World, those same German settlers who worked as tinsmiths crafted cutters made of cheap tin, and the shapes in which they were produced now included stars, spades, and hearts, as well as reindeer and clowns.

“Old tin can be identified from modern metals as it is relatively heavy and thick, usually darkened in color. These cutters make 3/4-inch to 1 1/8-inch-deep cuts,” according to Collectors Weekly. “The back of antique cutters are flat and may or may not have strap handles. Because tinsmiths tried to conserve every possible inch of metal they could, older backs are more or less cut to the shape of the cutting edge. These also have ‘air holes’ or ‘push holes,’ which helped detach the cookie dough from the cutter.”

Cookie cutters

Those cookie cutters made for the Christmas season were also made to be decorative, writes collector Kate Miller-Wilson for the antique blog Love to Know.

“As the idea of Christmas cookies spread throughout the Colonies, tinsmiths created Christmas-themed cutters that created cookies meant to be hung on Christmas trees. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the tradition of leaving cookies for Santa was established,” Miller-Wilson writes. ”Antique Christmas cookie cutters vary in value from a few dollars to over $100. In addition to the condition and age of the cookie cutter, size can also play a role in the value. For example, an extra-large, German-made Santa cookie cutter sold for about $80.”

Metal cookie cutters made in the 19th century can be found in antique stores and online – they were easily mass-produced, thanks to technological innovations made during the Industrial Revolution. These cookie cutters had handles made of metal or wood.
Aluminum cutters began to be produced around the turn of the century, with the most common coming from the 1930s.
“Metal cookie cutters with ‘bullet’ handles are especially sought after by collectors,” Collectors Weekly states. “In general, figurals like chickens and elephants tend to be more valuable than geometric shapes.”

These cutters weren’t just for cookies, however; in the early 20th century, they were made in the shapes of diamonds, hearts, spades, and diamonds – the four suites of playing cards – and made for sandwiches served at poker or bridge games.

n a single word, yes. In most cases vintage postcards are relatively inexpensive, making them ideal for beginning collectors. But in some cases, postcards, especially some produced between 1893 and 1950, can be worth a great deal of money. The question is, how does one know? The best way to determine the value of old postcards is to have them evaluated by an expert. On Sept. 2 & 3, at Collinsville, IL, 20 professional postcard dealers from seven states will gather for the annual postcard show and sale hosted by the St Louis Gateway Postcard Club. This is a great opportunity to bring in those old postcards that have been lying around the closet and have the cards appraised by professionals. While most old postcards have minimal value, there are some that can run into the hundreds of dollars each. It’s not just something that you want to toss into your next garage sale or recycling as you could easily be throwing money away.

This year the St Louis Gateway Postcard Club, with members in Missouri and the Illinois Metro East, will hold its 46th postcard show and sale. The show is usually held on the Friday and Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Due to a scheduling issue, this year the show will be Saturday, Sept. 3, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 4, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Club members get in at 9 a.m. on Friday. The show will be held at the convenient, spacious, and well-lighted American Legion Hall at 1022 Vandalia St. (Hwy 159) in Collinsville, IL. The show is easily accessible from Interstates 270, 70, 55, and 64 and is only 15 minutes from the St. Louis Gateway Arch.

This show is one of the largest shows of its type in the Midwest. It is also one of the few that offers free admission, free parking, free appraisals, and daily attendance prizes.

There will be an excellent mix of friendly dealers from Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, and Alabama, bringing thousands of cards, enough to cover nearly 100 tables, to fill empty places in collections whether you are a veteran collector, a beginner, or just someone who wants to know about our great postcard hobby. With all the postcards that will be available, you are sure to find something to your liking in all price ranges, whether it be a topic, holiday greetings, state view, real photo, or foreign card, with prices ranging from a quarter to many dollars.

Everywhere Cyndi Swall goes in her vintage camper, she attracts attention.

“It’s impossible to drive down the street without everybody honking and waving,” the Mission, KS, resident says. “Anything that small and old gets attention.”

Swall’s small wonder is her 1967 Oberlin Spot, a mobile treasure she bought four years ago from a former neighbor in the hip, bustling Kansas City suburb of Brookside. The man, who was considering turning it into a wine store on wheels, was more than happy to sell it to a friendly face.

Saw Potential

Where others saw lots of work to be done, Swall saw nothing but potential.

“The first time I saw her, it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen,” Swall recalls. “I knew I wanted to see this through. I wanted it to be something I could live in.”

To Swall’s delight, most of the camper’s original features were intact, but there was plenty to do in order to get it road-ready.

“It was fairly original, which I know a lot of people prefer, but nothing functioned,” Swall explains. “It still had the brown cabinetry, which I kept, but I painted it. The basic structure was there; it was mostly cosmetic. You could’ve camped in it, but it wouldn’t be very comfortable.”

Contact Corbin Crable at editor@discovervintage.com​