When I was a kid, I collected bone china animals. These were not expensive to buy nor worth much money, but I sure did enjoy them. The adults in my family enjoyed them, too, as they could give them to me as gifts without breaking the bank!

Well, I’m a big girl now, and I still love ceramic miniatures, but now I only collect those marked at least with country of origin (usually Germany) and often with a famous maker name if it will fit on the base. Some of these are worth quite a bit more money than were items in my childhood collection.

Hagen-Renaker

An American company, Hagen-Renaker, is among the best-known manufacturers of miniature animals. Founded in 1945, it ceased operation in 2021. HRs were usually sold attached to thin cardboard labels that identified the name and retail price of the item. The labels were designed to be removed and usually were. When that happens, there is no place on the figurines to put a maker’s mark; one learns to identify them by sight. Most can still be found for less than $5 apiece on the secondary market though some rarer items go much higher. You can find the most recently made examples of HR animals on the Hagen-Renaker web site, which, as of this writing, is still up at hagenrenaker.com.

Josef Originals

This U.S. company, which operated from the mid-1940s until 1985, made mostly human forms, but it also made a few miniature animals. Perhaps the best known of these are its mice in various poses and playing with various objects. Slightly larger than Hagen-Renakers, they still can fit into miniature display spaces. Like HR, these are affordably priced.

And Then There’s Germany

Although they aren’t always marked with a manufacturer’s name, these minis are usually at least marked “Germany.” They are exceptionally well made as Germany has a long history of porcelain production.

Goebel

Best known for its post-WWII era Hummel models of children, Goebel also made animal figurines, some in miniature (of which I have a lynx, rabbit, and deer in my collection). The company was founded in 1871 and is still in production today.

Pfeffer

Pfeffer (sometimes misspelled by sellers as Pfeiffer or Pfeifer) was in production in the Thuringia region of East Germany from the late 19th century to sometime in the 1940s. It is usually marked in green or gray with either a capital P inside a capital G or a reversed F sharing a spine with a P. In my own collection, a couple of miniature polar bears were relatively expensive in 1999 at $35 each, but I found the perfect-condition sow and piglet figurine teetering on the edge of a shelf in an antique mall for just $7 the following year.