Very unassuming pick up this week from a cold and chilly UK
Nothing special , it looks like many of the German locos of the period , Nothing Fancy about it , simple and with a mid quality clockwork mechanism , So why then am I pretty chuffed to have found it ?
Well it tells the tale very much of a huge part of the German toy industry in the Pre WWI era ... On first glance 99% of train collectors will look at it and say " Nice Karl Bub locomotive" but it isnt?
( Correction from @Arne It was made by BUB , but had the G & C Added to the front beam for inclusion and sale by Carette )
If pushed they will then say "Hmmm OK .. Issmayer?" and they would have perfectly acceptible reasons for thinking those two brands , as they both DID produce very similar locomotives over the years ...
It is only with closer inspection you will see the "Magic" " G. C. & Cie" on the front of the loco frame ...
" G. C. & Cie" stands for Georges Carette & Co , a Firm started in the 1880's by said Georges Carette , a Frenchman , who travelled to Germany as a boy and did an apprenticeship with the Bing Brothers , and who impressed them so , that they decided to back him in a private company to supply components for Bing and other German manufacturers is a sort of ambitious Co-op arrangement ...
Carette then for the next decade made bits and bobs for most of Germany's top tier toy-makers. After a time Carette realised there was far more money to be gained in making the actual toys himself , and because of his hard work and skill, he began to produce toys that outshone many of his former customers , in 1896 he travelled to the American Expo and demonstrated some of the first electric trains seen there... As electricity was becoming less rare in the USA scientific toys such as trains became huge ... and with that introduction Carette reached the pinnacle of toy design innovating rather than copying, which set many of his toys above the crowd. But being a good businessman he still had the grace to remember his roots and still work with other firms making items for them to onsell as well 
Then the First World War started rumbling , and despite being married to a German lady, he was still seen as "FRENCH" and had to go ... he fled Germany in 1916 and his company was liquidated in 1918 .. much of his tooling etc was snapped up by other manufacturers , which is why people think this little loco is a post WW1 Bub, Bing, or Issmayer ... but in reality it was made a decade earlier by a very clever man
He lived a long time in France and died in 1954 aged 93 ! ... but he never went on to produce toys again , rather enjoying his fortune and family in a modest way ... Carette Items regularly top "Record Prices" made at auction for various toys , he made elaborate cars and boats for example and pioneered new methods of lithography in his time , allowing elaborate designs other manufacturers could only dream of .. I am happy to have found this little loco ... my own small part of his very large tale
As an aside here is a link to some of Carette's boats made , if you got one of these as a kid , you parents loved you or just had STUPID money!
