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Hammer & Mold Est. 2026
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Know the toy. Then own it. Est. MMXXVI EU shipping, tracked
Vintage Kenner · Star Wars · Ghostbusters

Know the toy.
Then own it

Hammer & Mold brings together original vintage toys, the companies that made them and the stories that made them famous. Explore the history. Watch the commercials. Buy the originals.

Meet the Molders Browse the collection
The shop

For sale

Live auctions on original vintage toys. Place a bid, or take it straight away with Buy now.

The makers

Meet the Molders

We organize the collection the way it was built: maker first. The maker is the molder; its toy lines live beneath it. Filter the lines by their maker, or sort them across the years.

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Kenner

Star Wars

1977 – 1985

The line that invented the modern 3¾-inch action figure, and sold an empty box one Christmas to do it.

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Kenner

The Real Ghostbusters

1986 – 1991

Proton packs, ecto-plasma and gross-out mutations. The strangest, most inventive toys on the shelf.

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BullmarkMarusanPopy

Kaiju

1966 – 1984

Soft-vinyl monsters from Tokyo's tokusatsu boom. Godzilla, Ultraman and the beasts of late-night television, hand-poured and hand-painted.

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MaruyamaMedicomGoto

Sofubi

1953 – now

The material itself. Hollow Japanese soft vinyl, slush-cast in heated metal moulds, pulled out by hand and sprayed by hand. And Hiroshi Goto, who has been painting it for seventy years.

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Playmates

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

1988 – 1997

Mutant reptiles, pizza and ooze. The line that turned a black-and-white comic into a worldwide phenomenon.

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LJN

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

1982

The gentle alien of 1982. Poseable figures, glowing fingers and the most famous bicycle in cinema.

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Galoob

The A-Team

1983 – 1984

Mr. T, machine guns and a black van. No plan survived contact, but the toys did.

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Imperial

Godzilla & King Kong

1985 – 1986

The monsters you could actually own. Cheap vinyl on a hook by the till, from the company a Holocaust survivor built out of a ten-cent bouncing ball.

Meet the Molder →
Palitoy

Star Wars, in cardboard

1978 – 1985

Britain's Star Wars line, from the company that also made Action Man. Its Death Star is printed card because plastic cost too much, which is exactly why it is now the one collectors chase.

Meet the Molder →
Thinkway Toys

Toy Story

1995

The toys about toys. Pull-string Woody and Buzz, straight from Pixar's first feature.

Meet the Molder →
Why we exist

Not just a grid of photos

Anyone can sell an old toy. We want to tell you what you're actually looking at.

A vintage King Kong figure cranking the handle of an Agfa movie projector.
The Toy

Know what you're buying

Year, maker, series, scale, accessories and condition. The details collectors actually want to know.

The Story

Know where it came from

Who made it, when it appeared and what made it special. The story behind the plastic.

The Commercial

See how it was sold

The original TV commercials that introduced these toys to the world, right where they belong.

The workshop/ Moulds
The workshop

Moulds

How a toy is actually made, and how to read which way from the toy itself

Almost every object in this shop started as a cavity cut into a block of steel. Four different processes filled those cavities, and each one leaves its own evidence on the finished piece: a seam, a circle, a thickened ridge, a line of raised text on the back of a leg. None of it is damage. It is the manufacturing record, and once you can read it you can tell how a toy was made, often where, and usually when.

Written by Ramon Gervais/Photographed from stock we have handled/Hammer & Mold, Haarlem
4
Processes behind nearly everything here
0.02mm
The air gap a mould vents through
3–5°
The taper on a sprue bushing
1
Colour per shot, which is why parts come bagged by colour
Why it is worth knowing

The marks are not flaws.

A collector learns early to look for a seam down the side of a figure and a ring of faint circles on its back, and a collector who has not been told what those are tends to read them as wear, or as a sign of a cheap copy. They are neither. They are the places where the tool opened and where the part was pushed off it, and they are present on the finest Kenner figure ever made.

What they are worth is information. The process tells you what the thing is: a hollow soft-vinyl monster and a hard styrene action figure are different objects made in different buildings, and they age differently, clean differently and break differently. And the one piece of text that is unique to your particular toy, the moulded stamp, is cut into the tool itself. It is the closest thing a mass-produced object has to a birth certificate.

Kenner · 1980
The stamp, in the steel The back of a Kenner Hoth Stormtrooper's legs, with MADE IN HONG KONG and a 1980 L.F.L. copyright raised in the plastic
MADE IN HONG KONG on one leg, © 1980 L.F.L. on the other. Raised on the toy because it was cut as a recess into the cavity. The parting line runs down the inside of both legs.
Process one

Injection moulding

Hard plastic, sharp detail, enormous numbers. Nearly every action figure, vehicle and playset wall in this shop came out of a steel injection tool.

A tool is two halves. The cavity cuts the outside of the part and the core forms the inside, both machined out of tool steel, typically P20, H13, S7 or 420 stainless. Molten plastic is forced in through a tapered sprue, along a runner to each cavity, and through a gate into the part itself. Water runs through drilled channels to cool it. Air escapes through vents ground to less than 0.02 mm, small enough that plastic will not follow it out.

Then the halves separate and ejector pins push the part off the core. A rectangular part needs at least four, one at each corner. A cylindrical one needs three at 120 degrees. A sleeve can do the job instead and leaves nothing behind, which is why some parts have no pin marks at all.

One tool usually holds several cavities, and one shot fills all of them in one colour. That is the whole reason a playset arrives as a bag of brown railings, a bag of red ladders and a bag of grey walls: those are not assortments, they are shots.

An open tool, and what came out of it One half of an open steel injection mould, the polished cavity and its slides, with the moulded plastic part lying beside it
The cavity on the left, the part it made on the right. Every ridge in the steel is a groove in the plastic, and the other way round.
Photograph Bricetofly, released into the public domain ↗
One playset, sorted by shot A Playmates Turtles Sewer playset laid out in pieces, grouped by colour: green pipes, brown posts, red railings, grey walls
Playmates, 1989. Laid out, the colour groups are visible as what they are: each one a separate run of the tool.
Look for: a parting line round the silhouette, a small raised or sunken dot where the gate was, circles between half a millimetre and six across where the pins pushed, and dimples opposite anything thick.
Process two

Rotational and slush casting

Soft, hollow, light, and warm to the touch. Vinyl monsters, squeeze toys, dolls' heads and limbs.

Here the mould is not injected but filled and tipped. Liquid vinyl goes into a heated metal mould, the mould is turned so the liquid coats the inside, and the surplus is poured back out. What sets against the wall is the toy. What drains away is used again, which is exactly why the figure is hollow.

There are no ejector pins because nothing is pushed off a core: the part is pulled out of the mould by hand, often through its own opening, which is why a rotocast figure has a hole somewhere you are not meant to look. There is a seam, but a soft one. And because the final colour is sprayed on afterwards rather than mixed into the shot, two figures from the same mould genuinely do not match.

The Japanese branch of this, and the painter who has been colouring it for seventy years, has its own page.

Dor Mei · 1986
Soft vinyl, hollow A Dor Mei soft vinyl kaiju figure in profile
Squeeze it and it gives. That alone separates this process from everything above it.
Look for: give under the thumb, a hollow note when tapped, a soft wide seam rather than a crisp one, no pin circles, and paint that sits on the surface instead of being the surface.
Process three

Blow moulding

Big hollow things. Ride-on toys, bats, bowling pins, the larger vehicle bodies, anything that had to be light and cheap and enormous.

A soft tube of hot plastic, a parison, is hung between the two halves of a mould. The mould closes on it, pinching it shut at the ends, and air is blown in until the tube balloons against the walls. It is the same thing that makes a milk bottle, scaled up and given a face.

It leaves a tell that nothing else does. Where the mould pinched the tube closed, the material is folded on itself, so the seam is thicker than the wall around it rather than thinner. Usually it runs along the bottom or round the back where it will not be looked at, and on a cheaper piece it was never trimmed off at all.

Look for: a ridge you can feel with a fingernail, fatter than the plastic either side of it, on a part that is large, light and hollow.
Process four

Vacuum forming

The cheapest way to get a shape, and the reason so much of a playset is scenery rather than structure.

A flat sheet of plastic is heated until it sags, laid over a tool, and the air underneath is sucked out so the sheet is pulled down onto the shape. No second half, no injection, no pressure to speak of. Minutes of work and a tool that can be made of wood or resin instead of hardened steel.

You can read it instantly once you know: the inside is a perfect negative of the outside, because there is only one surface. It thins at the corners, where the sheet had to stretch furthest, so deep detail goes pale and slightly translucent. And there is no parting line anywhere, because the mould never closed on anything.

Playset terrain, the trays inside a carded blister, and the blister itself are all this process.

The buck, and the shell off it A wooden former beside the blue plastic shell that was vacuum formed over it
The tool is a block of wood. The shell on the right is one surface with no second half and no seam anywhere on it.
Photograph Pizza1512, CC BY-SA 3.0 ↗
Look for: one shell with no second half, thinning and translucency at the deepest corners, soft rounded detail, and no seam at all.
And the one that is not plastic

Die casting

The same idea in metal, and the reason a Matchbox car feels like it does.

Molten zinc alloy, usually a zamak, is forced under pressure into a hardened steel die. The sequence is injection moulding exactly, with a melt that happens to be metal: two halves, a gate, ejector pins, a parting line. The difference is in the hand. It is heavy, it holds a crisper edge than any plastic will, and where it has been dropped it dents instead of cracking.

In this trade that means Matchbox and Hot Wheels bodies, and in Japan it means Chogokin, the die-cast super-robots Popy built Bandai's business on.

Look for: weight out of all proportion to size, a seam that is metal rather than plastic, and chips that show bright grey underneath the paint.
In the hand

How to read a toy in thirty seconds

Squeeze it, tap it, turn it over, find the seam. Four questions and you have the process.

  1. SqueezeGives under the thumb? Rotocast vinyl. Rigid? Keep going.
  2. WeighHeavy for its size, dents rather than cracks? Die-cast.
  3. SeamA crisp line round the silhouette with small circles nearby? Injection. A thick folded ridge on a big hollow part? Blow moulded. No seam, one shell, pale at the corners? Vacuum formed.
  4. Turn itNow read the stamp: maker, country, and a year that is the year of the tool, not the year of the film.

That last one is the one worth the most. A moulded date is cut into the steel, so it dates the tool rather than the production run, and a tool stays in service for years. It is why a figure stamped 1980 can have left the factory in 1983, and why we date from the stamp and say so on every lot. If a stamp is worn to the point of being unreadable, that is itself a fact about the tool: steel wears, and the later the pull, the softer the letters.

What a mark is not is a reason to discount a piece. If a listing of ours calls out a seam, a pin circle or a gate dot, that is a description of how it was made. The things we do grade down are in condition and surface, which is a different page.

On film

Watch it happen

One for each process, in the order above, plus the one that is about the tools themselves: where the steel that made the vintage Kenner figures actually went. They play inline here; the title opens the clip on YouTube.

LEGO bricks in the making · injection ↗
What happened to the Kenner Star Wars moulds ↗
The factory: slush-cast soft vinyl ↗
Blow moulding, bats and balls ↗
Vacuum forming a blister ↗
How Hot Wheels are made · die casting ↗
Where this comes from

The tooling detail is from engineering references rather than the collecting hobby, because the hobby tends to describe these marks without saying what made them. The photographs are of pieces that have passed through this shop.

Keep reading

The workshop

The toolMouldsYou are here.
The surfaceRetrobrightingWhy white plastic yellows, and what peroxide really does. 1953 –SofubiThe vinyl itself, and the man who paints it. 1947 – 2000KennerStar Wars, Ghostbusters, and the 3¾-inch rule.
Home/About
About

It started with a shelf

Hammer & Mold · Netherlands

A private collection that grew into something bigger. This is where it comes from, and what we hunt for.

What began as a handful of childhood pieces turned into a hunt: for the odd, the overlooked and the wonderfully strange. The finding, the careful cleaning, the search for a missing weapon or a lost accessory, the stories behind each toy. Somewhere along the way the collecting became a way of living.

We are drawn to the weird ones. Toys that were played with, loved and actually handled, over the pristine pieces sealed and graded never to be opened again. A toy locked in plastic, never to be read or felt, becomes a frozen artifact. We would rather keep them alive.

Have a collection of your own? We buy and take on whole collections and single pieces. Tell us what you have, send a few photos, and we will look after it.

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Sell with us

Upload. AI builds the listing

Photos in. Listing ready.

Upload a few clear photos. Our AI identifies the toy, dates it, checks the condition and builds the listing for you. It also reviews recent sales to suggest a fair starting price.

Identification is free. You only use a listing when you decide to sell.

How it works

From photos to listing in two steps

1 · Upload & guide

Add photos and direction

Add clear photos of the front, back, accessories and any visible flaws. Include a close-up of the maker's stamp where possible.

You can also add your own source or a note of direction, either to point us at something you already trust or to have the identification double-checked against it.

A worn or partly legible stamp is fine.

2 · Review & list

We identify, check and grade it

Our AI reads the toy the way Hammer & Mold does, dating it from the moulded stamp rather than the box, then identifies the year, line and variant, grades the condition and reviews recent sales to suggest a price.

You see the identification, the sources, the condition, the pricing and the listing details before anything goes live. Change what you like, set your Reserve or Buy Now price, then approve the listing.

Optional, and worth a minute. We can grade what we can see, but we cannot tell from a photograph whether the eyes still light up, and on a toy that has electronics that is usually the largest single thing about what it is worth. If you already know the reference, the variant or a source that settles it, put it here and we will check against it.
Your photos stay in your browser until you start identification. Identification is free. A listing is only used when you choose to publish the item for sale.
Your toy details will appear here.
Selling packages

What it costs to sell

Toy identification is free and unlimited. Photograph anything and we will identify it, date it, show what originally came with it and grade its condition. You only pay when you list. Choose a package based on how much you sell, or let us work out which one costs you least.

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Sell it to us

Or skip the auction and take the money today

Whole collections and single pieces

You do not have to run an auction to get rid of a box of toys. Send us photographs, we tell you what it is worth, and we make you an offer for the lot. You post one parcel and we pay. No listing, no waiting, no wondering whether it sells.

Two ways, and one of them is better for you

Sell it to us, or sell it through us

We would rather you picked the right one than the one that suits us, so here is the arithmetic on a toy we think will fetch €30.

On a toy worth about €30Sell it to usSell it through us
You receive€ 15,00€ 25,50
WhenWithin a weekAfter it sells
If it does not sellOur problemYou still have it
Photographs, listing, packingWe do itYou do it
If it turns out to be rareWe keep the upsideYou keep it
We pay about half of what we think a piece will fetch, and we say so up front. That is what buying it outright costs us: we take the risk that it does not sell, we do the photographing and grading and packing, and we wait for our money instead of you. If you would rather have the other €10,50 and do the work yourself, list it and keep 85%. Both offers are real and the page for the other one is here.
What we take

Bring the box, not the figure

The honest reason: assessing one toy and assessing forty costs us nearly the same in setup, so a whole collection is worth far more of our attention than a single common figure.

Yes, gladly
  • Whole collections, boxes, attic finds, shop stock
  • Single pieces we think will fetch €25 or more
  • Played-with condition. Paint loss and loose joints are fine
  • Incomplete figures, spares, accessories and weapons in a bag
  • Anything with a moulded maker's stamp, even a worn one
A collection has no minimum per piece. Send the lot and we price it as a lot.
Not for us
  • Single common figures under about €25
  • Modern reissues and toys still on shop shelves
  • Broken beyond display: melted, snapped, missing limbs
  • Bootlegs presented as the licensed original
  • Anything that is not a toy, model or related memorabilia
A single cheap figure is not worth what it costs either of us to move it. List it yourself, or put it in with a box of others.
How it goes

Photographs, an offer, a parcel

1. You send photographs. A few clear shots of what you have, laid out. For anything you think is worth something, add a close-up of the moulded stamp on the feet or the lower back: that text is what lets us date it and find what it really sells for.

2. We tell you what it is, before we make an offer. You get the identification either way, and you keep it whether you sell to us or not. If we think a piece is worth more than we would pay for it, we will say so and tell you to list it yourself.

3. We make one offer for the lot. Within two working days, with the reasoning attached: what we think each piece fetches and what we are paying for it. No haggling and no fishing.

4. You post it, we pay. We send you a prepaid label. Payment goes out the day the parcel arrives and matches the photographs. If something is not as described you get the parcel back at our cost, not a lower offer.

Show us

What have you got?

Photographs and a way to reach you. Nothing else needed, and nothing is committed by sending it.

We reply within two working days. Your photographs are used to make you an offer and for nothing else.
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Selling packages

Pick the package that fits how you sell

Toy identification is always free and unlimited. Photograph anything and we will tell you what it is, who made it, when it was made and what condition it is in. You only pay when you sell. Choose a package based on how much you sell each month. Every package includes price research, buyer protection and live postage rates.

Which one, exactly

See which package costs you least

Tell us roughly how much you sell. We will compare the monthly fee and selling fee together and recommend the cheapest package.

The number that matters

What the platform takes out of a sale

Compare what buyer and seller pay together. On a €100 hammer price, Catawiki charges the seller 12.5% and adds another 9% buyer fee. The buyer pays €109 while the seller receives €87,50. Hammer & Mold adds no buyer fee. A €100 hammer price means the buyer pays €100.

On a €100 hammer priceBuyer paysSeller receivesTotal platform fees
Catawiki€ 109,00€ 87,5021,5%
Hammer & Mold, Starter€ 100,00€ 85,0015,0%
Hammer & Mold, Trader€ 100,00€ 88,0012,0%
Hammer & Mold, Dealer€ 100,00€ 92,008,0%
Monthly package fees are not included in this table. The calculator above includes both your package fee and selling fee to show which package costs least at your sales volume.
Catawiki figures based on its published seller commission and buyer protection fee, August 2026.
Is the monthly fee worth it?

What each package really costs

A monthly package fee buys you a lower selling fee. Sell enough in a month and the saving becomes greater than the subscription. Sell less, and Starter is cheaper. The table shows the total cost of each package at different monthly sales volumes.

Changing your package

Move up. Move down. Any time.

  • Upgrades happen immediately. Your new listing allowance is available straight away. You only pay the difference for the rest of the month.
  • Downgrades start next month. Your current package stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for. You can cancel the change before then.
  • Unused listings stay with you. They roll over up to twice your monthly allowance. Downgrading never removes listings you have already accumulated.
  • No minimum term. No phone calls. Change or cancel your package from your account whenever you need to.
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We need the delivery address before payment, so the postage you are charged is the postage for your own country and not an estimate.

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