Sharon Korbeck: Behind the Toy Shop
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Antique Trader magazines. She has also served as Editor for their
Toys & Prices price guide and other projects from their collectors
line. Scoop talked with her about her magazines, her background, and different
kinds of collecting following her attendance at the October 19-20 Atlantique
City show.
How long have you been at Krause and what did you start
doing there?
I’ve been here 8 years and I started with a magazine we no
longer publish called Toy Collector & Price Guide. So I’ve been
involved in the toy division for 8 years. For the last few years I’ve been doing
Toy Shop magazine, which comes out every two weeks, as well as Antique
Trader, which is a weekly. I’ve also done a lot of work with our toy books
like Toys & Prices – our annual price guide for just about every kind
of toy you can think of – from Barbies to lunch boxes. On Toys &
Prices, I’m not involved in the day-to-day anymore. That was a book I
actually started with when I came here in 1994, so I had a lot of hands-on for
about five years. Now my name remains on it kind of as a consultant. I do work
with the Editor on it, but pretty much just as a consultant.
What’s
involved in your daily operation of Toy Shop?
Tom Bartsch and I
work primarily on Toy Shop. We’re dealing with outside authors, who may
be columnists or writers we’re assigning things to, or we’re working on copy
that has come in, or writing our own stories. For example, Tom and I just came
back from the Atlantique City show. We go to Toy Fair and other shows, and
report on them. Really editing outside copy, writing original copy, and doing
research for whatever story might be coming up is what takes care of our week.
We do put some of the stories from Toy Shop on-line, and Tom works a lot
on that. A lot of my time now has been split with our antiques publication, so
more of my duties have been with Antique Trader
magazine.
Antique Trader is a publication that existed for a
long time before Krause Publications acquired it. What did you change about
it?
That’s a really good question. This is the 45th anniversary of
Antique Trader. I became involved with it a little over a year ago. At
that time, we did a re-launch of the title. We completely revamped the editorial
content, making it a much more reader friendly package. Instead of 10-page
stories, we have 2-page stories with sidebars and pull-outs and prices and so
on, really making it a little fresher and easier to read. We’ve been doing that
with Toy Shop and all our publications. Obviously, one thing Krause has
come up against is the Internet – very quick read information. We’ve been trying
to translate that into our publications. We still want to give our readers the
information that Krause is so well known for coming up with, yet we want to make
it easier for them to read because we do know that we’re competing against other
forms of media.
How successful do you think you’ve been in that so
far?
Especially in terms of Toy Shop, we’ve been very successful
with our editorial package, mainly because I don’t see any other toy magazines
doing exactly what we’re doing. For example, there’s the action figure
publications, and they’re taking a different focus than we are. They’re just
covering action figures and new stuff. Toy Shop, however, is covering old
as well as new. We have auction coverage. About the only other publication that
does that is Antique Toy World, and they’re completely antique toys,
while we’re antique, baby boomer and new stuff. In terms of successfully hitting
the editorial niche, we’re doing fine. Other than the Internet, I don’t know
where people are getting this information. Advertising wise, that’s a whole new
ballgame. You’re competing against everybody – including the Internet. I can
only speak for editorial, but I think our mix is considerably different than our
competition, and it has to be.
It seems like you’ve taken a broad
approach in Toy Shop, covering a lot of categories, with some
concentration on a few specialties. Is that right?
We’ve tried to segment
Toy Shop within the last year or two. According to our surveys, we know
our readers are primarily interested die-casts, specifically Hot Wheels, and
action figures. Those are two huge areas, as well as character toys. So we’ll
have a die-cast column, a Hot Wheels column, and then we’ll have our ad reps
sell specifically to those dealers. I think it makes Toy Shop easier to
read. If you don’t have any interest in die-casts, you can skip over that and go
right to the character toys section. Other publications have taken that approach
as well. For example, Lee’s Toy Review used to be strictly action
figures, but now we see him also covering die-casts and Hot Wheels. You have to
pay attention to what your readers are telling you. I think we’ve tried to do
that in the last couple of years by refining what we offer. We’ve gotten rid of
some columns that were less read. For example, we didn’t find that Barbie was as
important as Hot Wheels. So, while we haven’t abandoned covering Barbie, we
simply don’t do it on an every issue basis. We’re trying to respond to both the
readers and the advertisers and give them what they want, but that seems to
change, too.
It seems like you’re pretty aggressive about trying to
find out what the readers want. What methods do you use to do that?
We do
our surveys. I believe our readership surveys are done every two years. We have
an action marketing division that conducts a survey among our readership. We
also do mini-surveys when we go to shows. We try to do many things like that. We
also try to respond what our readers are telling us in our letters. Our letters
column has not been that active, which is a little bit disappointing to us.
We’re not quite sure why. We really wish we got more feedback, whether it be
good or bad. I just want letters!
Some publishers are altogether
getting rid of letters pages, in some cases replacing them with informational
pages and in other cases with story or ad pages, under the theory that the
discourse is happening on the Internet instead.
That’s interesting. Good
point. Certainly, we see what people are saying in chat rooms, and I think
they’re probably a little more open to that sort of thing. What I don’t like
about chat rooms is they’re usually anonymous. You’re not going to be anonymous
on a letters page due to the nature of journalism. We want to be more of an
information source, perhaps, than some of the other magazines are. Toy
Fare and Lee’s Toy Review do an excellent job of letting people know
about current action figures and what’s out there, and that’s their
niche…
Isn’t what you’re doing more of an effort to put it in
context since you’re covering older material, too?
Yes, to put it in
context and give them some explanation. Where they might be listing every Bandai
action figure that comes out, we might tell you about that, but we want to be
more than just a listing. For example, other than CBG, the only place I read
anything about Super Queens figures in the Heritage Comics Auction was in Toy
Shop. I didn’t read that in any of the action figure magazines. And we cover
eBay stuff, too, so I think we’re trying to be the community news source. There
isn’t really anything else out there that does that.
When you’re
getting reader surveys or feedback, do you ever get a result that utterly
surprises you?
I don’t have the surveys in front of me, but if anything
has changed over the eight years that I’ve been here, certainly it is Internet
usage. Obviously, as a company, we have to realize that. We have to figure out
ways to embrace that, make our web presence better, and connect our magazine
with the Internet more. We now have a column called, “Web Watch.” We look at the
toy sites. If there’s a pretty cool website, instead of five years ago when we
wouldn’t have mentioned it, now we embrace it and say, “Hey, this is a cool
website. Check it out!” With Toy Shop, we’ve got a fairly young audience
and we’re an information source, so we have to address what they
want.
Is it the same with Antique Trader?
The readership
between Antique Trader and Toy Shop is like night and day.
Antique Trader has a much older readership, and yet we do cover the
Internet there, too. We just completed a survey and the numbers for the people
using the Internet for information are considerably different than they were
just four or five years ago. And these are older readers. They use the Internet
for information, say to look up a club on depression glass, but they want to buy
and sell in Antique Trader or elsewhere. They’re using it for different
things, I think, than the Toy Shop readers are. Of course, we’ve
recognized that we’ve had to change with the Internet, but now we’re trying to
find ways that we can marry the print and the Internet. The challenge for
Antique Trader and Toy Shop is that both those publications were
founded as shoppers, as traders, with no editorial content. They existed for the
sole purpose of communicating and networking with people who had the same
interests. We have the Internet to help us do that these days, so we need to
think of better and more interesting reasons to get them to come to our
magazines. Giving them information, editorial content and referral to the
Internet, that’s what they’re going to get from us. They might not just sell a
toy through Toy Shop, but if they come to us they’re going to get a lot
more. We’re giving you a lot more information than we did before. We’re telling
you where to go on-line to find interesting things, we’re telling you when the
shows are, and we’re showing you what the auction results were to help you price
your items. We never gave you that before. All we gave you was a venue to buy
and sell, which was great in its day, but the trading publications have to
evolve.
Did you collect before you worked at Krause?
No.[laughter]
Do you now?
Yes. Too many fringe collections in a
very small house. I didn’t collect before I came here.
What was your
background?
I was a journalist and children’s librarian. Through my
children’s librarian work, I became interested in children’s books and started
collecting Humpty Dumpty items. It’s probably my main collection right now,
about 700-800 items. Since then, I’ve branched out. My two very active
collections right now are tin game boards and tin tops. The most familiar game
boards would be Chinese Checkers or darts. I’ve got about 25 of them now, mostly
made by Pressman, Wolverine, or Marx. Actually, that’s proven to be a fun
collection recently because nobody really wants them [laughter], so I can find
them really easily and cheap. So, who knows? I’m not really an investment
collector at all, but I just buy things I like.
What’s your best
Humpty Dumpty piece?
My favorite is a wood Fisher Price toy from 1957. It
was a pricier piece and I was never able to afford it, so I bought it online in
lesser condition for about $45, and I love it. It’s not perfect, but it’s one I
wanted. That’s my favorite item from that collection, and I’d say my Marx game
boards from that collection.
Are there any trends you see coming
up?
The trend I’d like to see mellow out a bit is that of buying
something at a toy store and selling it immediately the next day for more money.
But I do think that with the collectible toys that are coming out, some
companies are doing outstanding jobs with them. I’d love to see stuff that has
appreciated in value for a while, though, like baby boomer things. I think
ultimately what toy collecting is about is remembering something you had and
getting it back. It’s more than that, obviously, but that’s why the Super Queens
sell for $3,000 – and that’s cool! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t buy
new toys. I buy a ton of them, and I love them!
What are some recent
new ones you’ve picked up?
I like some of the Barbies. The Malibu Barbie
re-issue is nicely done. Also the small Kelly and Tommy dolls dressed like
Mickey and Minnie Mouse are pretty nice. My favorite toy that I’ve purchased
recently is Operation Brain Surgery, which is an update of the old Operation
game. It’s a head of the little guy, and you reach in to grab things like “Ice
Cream Headache.” And if you touch the sides, it beeps. That’s what my nieces are
getting for Christmas. And anything Yoda. I love Yoda. And Mr. Potato Head, as
this year is his 50th anniversary…
Mr. Potato Head is a great lead
in to our next question. Do you see a big impact from the character movies we’ve
seen recently?
Spider-Man, this year, did very well. We put one of
the Toy Biz Spider-Man toys, the Super-Articulated Spider-Man, on our list for
our Reader Awards as one of the best toys of the year. Certainly that and
Star Wars. And with Mr. Potato Head being in Toy Story, maybe it
made the younger generation more aware of him. I don’t think in the long run it
made huge difference, but it probably made a good dent
retail-wise.
Sometimes these characters have lives of their
own…
I was amazed. I own some vintage Mr. Potato Heads, and I brought
them over to my nephew to play with. He’s three and he sat there for an hour
with a plain old Mr. Potato Head. It blew me away. I honestly didn’t think a kid
today would care about sticking a nose on a plastic potato, but he did. He
surprised me, so much so that I wrote an editorial about it. It’s not all about
Sega and Nintendo.
Any other trends you see at the moment in the
antiques area?
What we saw this past weekend at the Atlantique City show
was a ton of booths with sports memorabilia. Very nicely done booths. Everything
from game-used uniforms and bats to just decorative items for your home. Felt
pennants from Harvard and so on. There were a lot of dealers with that stuff.
This year and last year there were a lot of dealers with patriotic items. That
went nuts last year and I think it’s still pretty strong. If there’s a huge
trend we’re seeing in antiques, it’s decorating with antiques. We just did a
cover story on it. It’s huge. If you look at any of the mainstream magazines
like Country Living or Country Home, they’re all covering antiques
now where they didn’t use to. They used to cover a lot of that “country stuff,”
mass marketed stuff that you’d decorate your house with… Why do that when you
can get something that will not only make your house look beautiful, but it will
hold its value? We’re really seeing the mainstream embrace antiques as home
décor. Gardening antiques are popular, too.
When is the next
edition of Toys & Prices coming out?
It should be out by now,
but it’s a little behind schedule, since it’s our 10th Anniversary edition. It
should be out within the next few months, by the end of the year. It’s usually
out by the end of October. It just took a little bit longer on this one because,
being the 10th Anniversary edition, we made a lot of changes
design-wise.
What kind of effect, if any, has the sale of Krause to
F&W Publications had on you and your operation there?
The buyout
really hasn’t affected us at all in our division. Of course, you never know what
will happen down the road, but right now, it’s business as usual with our
titles. I’ve met several of the F & W people; actually a few came down to
Atlantique City. They seemed very nice. Other than that, the sale has not had a
direct impact on how we’re doing things here in toyland.
>When you’re
getting reader surveys or feedback, do you ever get a result that utterly
surprises you?</b><br>I don’t have the surveys in front of me, but if anything
has changed over the eight years that I’ve been here, certainly it is Internet
usage. Obviously, as a company, we have to realize that. We have to figure out
ways to embrace that, make our web presence better, and connect our magazine
with the Internet more. We now have a column called, ”Web Watch.” We look at the
toy sites. If there’s a pretty cool website, instead of five years ago when we
wouldn’t have mentioned it, now we embrace it and say, ”Hey, this is a cool
website. Check it out!” With <i>Toy Shop</i>, we’ve got a fairly young audience
and we’re an information source, so we have to address what they
want.<br><br><b>Is it the same with Antique Trader?</b><br>The readership
between <i>Antique Trader</i> and <i>Toy Shop</i> is like night and day.
<i>Antique Trader </i>has a much older readership, and yet we do cover the
Internet there, too. We just completed a survey and the numbers for the people
using the Internet for information are considerably different than they were
just four or five years ago. And these are older readers. They use the Internet
for information, say to look up a club on depression glass, but they want to buy
and sell in <i>Antique Trader</i> or elsewhere. They’re using it for different
things, I think, than the <i>Toy Shop</i> readers are. Of course we’ve
recognized that we’ve had to change with the Internet, but now we’re trying to
find ways that we can marry the print and the Internet. The challenge for
<i>Antique Trader</i> and <i>Toy Shop</i> is that both those publications were
founded as shoppers, as traders, with no editorial content. They existed for the
sole purpose of communicating and networking with people who had the same
interests. We have the Internet to help us do that these days, so we need to
think of better and more interesting reasons to get them to come to our
magazines. Giving them information, editorial content and referral to the
Internet, that’s what they’re going to get from us. They might not just sell a
toy through <i>Toy Shop</i>, but if they come to us they’re going to get a lot
more. We’re giving you a lot more information than we did before. We’re telling
you where to go on-line to find interesting things, we’re telling you when the
shows are, and we’re showing you what the auction results were to help you price
your items. We never gave you that before. All we gave you was a venue to buy
and sell, which was great in its day, but the trading publications have to
evolve.<br><br><b>Did you collect before you worked at Krause?</b><br>No.
[laughter]<br><br><b>Do you now?</b><br>Yes. Too many fringe collections in a
very small house. I didn’t collect before I came here.<br><br><b>What was your
background?</b><br>I was a journalist and children’s librarian. Through my
children’s librarian work, I became interested in children’s books and started
collecting Humpty Dumpty items. It’s probably my main collection right now,
about 700-800 items. Since then, I’ve branched out. My two very active
collections right now are tin game boards and tin tops. The most familiar game
boards would be Chinese Checkers or dart boards. I’ve got about 25 of them now,
mostly made by Pressman, and Wolverine, and even Marx did some. Actually that’s
proven to be a fun collection recently because nobody really wants them
[laughter], so I can find them really easily and cheap. So, who knows? I’m not
really an investment collector at all, but I just buy things I
like.<br><br><b>What’s your best Humpty Dumpty piece?</b><br>My favorite is a
wood Fisher Price toy from 1957. It was a pricier piece and I was never able to
afford it, so I bought it online in lesser condition for about $45, and I love
it. It’s not perfect, but it’s one I wanted. That’s my favorite item from that
collection, and I’d say my Marx game boards from that collection. <br><br><b>Are
there any trends you see coming up?</b><br>The trend I’d like to see mellow out
a bit is buying something at toy store and selling it immediately the next day
for more money. I think with the collectible toys that are coming out, some
companies are doing outstanding jobs with them. I’d love to see stuff that has
appreciated in value for a while, like baby boomer things. I think ultimately
what toy collecting is about is remembering something you had and getting it
back. It’s more than that, too, obviously, but that’s why the Super Queens sell
for $3,000 and that’s cool! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying don’t buy new
toys. I buy a ton of them, and I love them! <br><br><b>What are some recent new
ones you’ve picked up?</b><br>I like some of the Barbies. The Malibu Barbie
re-issue is nicely done. Also the small Kelly and Tommy dolls dressed like
Mickey and Minnie Mouse are pretty nice. My favorite toy that I’ve purchased
recently is Operation Brain Surgery, which is an update of the old Operation
game. It’s a head of the little guy, and you reach in to grab things like ”Ice
Cream Headache.” And if you touch the sides, it beeps. That’s what my nieces are
getting for Christmas. And anything Yoda. I love Yoda. And Mr. Potato Head, as
this year is his 50th anniversary...<br><br><b>Mr. Potato Head is a great lead
in to our next question. Do you see a big impact from the character movies we’ve
seen recently?</b><br><i>Spider-Man</i>, this year, did very well. We put one of
the Toy Biz Spider-Man toys, the Super-Articulated Spider-Man, on our list for
our Reader Awards as one of the best toys of the year. Certainly that and
<i>Star Wars</i>. And with Mr. Potato Head being in <i>Toy Story,</i> maybe it
made the younger generation more aware of him. I don’t think in the long run it
made huge difference, but it probably made a good dent
retail-wise.<br><br><b>Sometimes these characters have lives of their
own...</b><br>I was amazed. I own some vintage Mr. Potato Heads, and I brought
them over to my nephew to play with. He’s three and he sat there for an hour
with a plain old Mr. Potato Head. It blew me away. I honestly didn’t think a kid
today would care about sticking a nose on a plastic potato, but he did. He
surprised me, so much so that I wrote an editorial about it. It’s not all about
Sega and Nintendo.<br><br><b>Any other trends you see at the moment in the
antiques area?</b><br>What we saw this past weekend at the Atlantique City show
was a ton of booths with sports memorabilia. Very nicely done booths. Everything
from game-used uniforms and bats to just decorative items for your home. Felt
pennants from Harvard and so on. There were a lot of dealers with that stuff.
This year and last year there were a lot of dealers with patriotic items. That
went nuts last year and I think it’s still pretty strong. If there’s a huge
trend we’re seeing in antiques, it’s decorating with antiques. We just did a
cover story on it. It’s huge. If you look at any of the mainstream magazines
like <i>Country Living </i>or <i>Country Home</i>, they’re all covering antiques
now where they didn’t use to. They used to cover a lot of that ”country stuff,”
mass marketed stuff that you’d decorate your house with... Why do that when you
can get something that will not only make your house look beautiful, but it will
hold its value? We’re really seeing the mainstream embrace antiques as home
décor. Gardening antiques are popular, too.<br><br><b>When is the next
edition of <i>Toys & Prices</i> coming out?</b><br>It should be out by now,
but it’s a little behind schedule, since it’s our 10th Anniversary edition. It
should be out within the next few months, by the end of the year. It’s usually
out by the end of October. It just took a little bit longer on this one because,
being the 10th Anniversary edition, we made a lot of changes
design-wise.<br><br><b>What kind of effect, if any, has the sale of Krause to
F&W Publications had on you and your operation there?</b><br>The buyout
really hasn’t affected us at all in our division. Of course, you never know what
will happen down the road, but right now, it’s business as usual with our
titles. I’ve met several of the F & W people; actually a few came down to
Atlantique City. They seemed very nice. Other than that, the sale has not had a
direct impact on how we’re doing things here in toyland.<br></div>
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