Vintage Strollers
There was a time when the pace of life was slower and it was more common for a family to take their baby for a walk in a fancy stroller. Vintage strollers are now collector’s items.
There has been a major shift in the design of baby strollers in the last couple of decades. This shift has been a concession to a faster paced life. It seems that most people are just too busy to take baby for a stroll. The very name strollers came from the idea of a leisure walk along a shady street or to a local park with baby comfortable in some large and fancy wagon like device. These rather fancy baby carriages are now called vintage strollers and there is some demand for them by collectors and lovers of nostalgia.
The classic vintage stroller, or pram as they were called in England, is usually large. This may be one of the major changes that have taken place in strollers in recent years. The main emphasis today is on light weight and portability. The stroller today is designed to be folded up and thrown into the back seat of the car. The old fashion stroller rarely could be folded up to a size that would satisfy today’s automobile orientated parents.
The old fashion stroller was generally constructed using heavy materials. Steel was common in the frames. They were heavy and sturdy. This is one reason why many of them have been preserved so well. However, few people anticipated that they would one day be considered a collectors item. A recent review of EBay showed only 14 items listed for auction under the category of “vintage stroller or pram.”
As usual with any collectors item, supply is what controls price. The well preserved vintage strollers listed on EBay were rather pricy. The lack of portability was indicated by the fact that most of them were listed for pick up at the seller’s house. The cost of shipping them was considered prohibitively high due to their size and weight.
Europe went even more overboard with strollers during the period between the 1930’s-1970’s. The series of extremely fancy strollers were produced. These are called Ouderwetse-Kinderwagens, which is Dutch for “old fashioned strollers.” Some of these were designed with what were very futuristic designs quite unlike the more classic English and American models. Some of the well preserved models sell for upwards of two thousand dollars today. As with many vintage products, there is a bit of stirring in the retro stroller market. People long for the slower paced past and the image of the scene in “Gone with the Wind” where Rhett and Scarlett are pushing their baby down the street in a large baby carriage is a nostalgic part of American culture.