My Own Money Manager Manifested!

I mentioned in a recent post that my family likes to joke that if we talk about or think about a certain model enough, we can manifest it. So that said, I spent the last several months working on and researching my early history of Breyer post, and I most definitely had Breyer's My Own Money Manager bank on the brain because of it. I've wanted one for years, but they're very hard to find, and they're usually expensive despite often being in rough shape when they do turn up.

So, not surprisingly, I was very excited to see a Money Manager pop up on eBay mere days after my Breyer history post went live a couple of weeks ago. Manifested? Maybe! I stalked the auction impatiently for a week, won it for a song, and then refreshed the tracking number for the box frequently once it was shipped. As soon as I got the text notification that it had arrived, I flew out of my office, slapped a sign on the door that I was "at lunch," and ran over to the campus mail room to retrieve the box.

The auction did give the dimensions of the Money Manager, not much more than 4 inches tall, but it's smaller than I've always imagined it. It's so tiny and cute!

Yay! Silly grail achieved!

According to the "New Toys On Parade" feature in the February 1950 issue of Toys and Novelties, a Chicago toy industry magazine, the My Own Money Managers were sold exclusively by Gimbels in New York for the holidays beginning in 1949 with more general distribution of the item planned for 1950.  The Money Managers were described as "authentic, miniature office file[s]," and they were advertised as having "sales potential to adults, teen-agers, careerists, for office petty cash, and unlimited other purposes," although they were primarily marketed for kids. Each one came with printed labels for the drawers, "12 popular headings for children, 8 for adults, and 4 blanks for personal projects." The Money Managers  also came with a booklet entitled "Grow A Self-Reliant Child."

February 1950 Toys and Novelties

The Money Managers came in "flag red" or "forest green," according to Breyer's advertising, and they were molded in Tenite plastic, just like the horses that would follow soon after. They were highly touted by Parents magazine and seem to have been popular sellers initially. Peter Stone, son of company founder Sam Stone, recalled that the Money Managers were sold in Walgreens drug stores (and likely other drug stores and five-and-dimes of the time). He also remembered seeing commercials for them on TV featuring a local Chicago celebrity. [1] The ad on the left below shows a child watching just such a commercial on TV.

March 1950 Toys and Novelties ads

In June 1950, an ad for a 6-drawer Money Manager was featured in Toys and Novelties. It was priced at $2.98, the original price for the 4-drawer model (which was reduced to only $1.98). Interestingly, the ad also includes model numbers for the Money Managers, 0044 for the 4-drawer and 0046 for the 6-drawer. There aren't many Money Managers in the hands of collectors, and the majority of them are 4-drawer examples. I think I recall seeing a 6-drawer example owned by another collector in a photo on Facebook several years ago, but I can't find it again, so I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly. Whatever the case, the 6-drawer Money Manager was only advertised once in Toys and Novelties as best I can tell (my local archive was missing some issues from the early 1950s), and they are even harder to find than the 4-drawer version.

For the holidays in 1950, Sears offered the usual red and green Money Managers as well as a tortoise shell version marketed as a Cigarette Host for adults. Collector Andrea Gurdon found one in the original box some years ago---you can read about it on her blog here. Peter Stone said that his father and his business partner came up with the idea for the cigarette host first, but it didn't sell well, so they rebranded it as a children's bank. [2]

1950 Sears ad

As of this writing, it's known that some Money Managers are just marked "Pat. Pending" while others say "Breyer Molding Co., Chicago, Ill., Pat. Pending, Made In U.S.A." Presumably, the earliest pieces had only the short patent pending text while the later versions included the Breyer name. Andrea's Cigarette Host has the full text, so it seems likely that Breyer continued to sell those along with the Money Managers at least as late as December 1950. I haven't found any other ads for the Cigarette Host, so that may suggest that it was only sold for about a year which is in keeping with Peter's recollection that it sold poorly. That would also suggest the text on the Cigarette Hosts and Money Managers was expanded from "Pat. Pending" to the full wording by late 1950. If that's the case, I would assume that Money Managers like mine that are only marked "Pat. Pending" are presumably from the first few months of production.

Some of the earliest ads for Money Managers in magazines like Toys and Novelties and Playthings featured palomino and alabaster Western Horses on one side of a page with the Money Managers on the back. I didn't have either of those color horses handy today for photos, so this well-loved old pinto WH who hangs out in my office got to be the scale model.

The last ads for Money Managers appeared in 1953 magazines, and after that, there were no further mentions of them from Breyer. By that time of course, Breyer had discovered that plastic horses sold really well, and their toy line had taken off in a more fun direction. More on that soon when I post part two of Breyer's early history in the 1950s.

Money Managers initially sold for $2.98 in 1950 which is the equivalent of $38.92 in 2024 (according the the US Inflation Calculator website), so they were not inexpensive items. Even when they were marked down to $1.98 in mid-1950 and then $1.69 in the Sears 1950 holiday catalog, that was still $25.86 and $22.07. A more reasonable price to be sure, but perhaps not low enough to keep them a viable product.

When Nancy Young published the last edition of her Breyer Molds and Models book in 1999, she was not aware of any Money Managers in the hands of collectors. [3] In the intervening years, a few of them have come to light, but they remain pretty elusive despite having been available for about 4 years from late 1949-1953. This is likely due in part to the fact that some of them are not marked Breyer, and they probably fly under the radar unidentified on sites like eBay. Also, though Money Managers are fairly solidly constructed---mine is heavier than I expected---they are a bit fragile. The doors on the drawers fit snugly and can be hard to open and unlock for coin retrieval. If handled roughly, they can chip, crack, and break. The cases are also prone to warping, making the drawers inaccessible and the product useless. I would guess a lot of these ended up in land fills long ago.

The handful of other Money Managers owned by collectors that I've seen seem to be evenly split between green and red, and all of the ones I could find pictures of have 4-drawers. If someone reading this had a 6-drawer example, I'd love to see a photo! As for the Cigarette Host, I have not seen anyone mention finding one besides Andrea. This isn't entirely surprising. Since the Money Managers are not horses or animals, they have a pretty limited audience among Breyer collectors. But I would hope there are more lurking out there, waiting to be found in the collection of early toy enthusiasts or tobacciana collectors. I will certainly be on the hunt for Money Manager variations now!

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1) Young, Nancy Atkinson. Breyer Molds and Models: Horses, Riders, and Animals 1950-1997. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1999), pg. 332.

2) Ibid.

3) Ibid.