Black (Cat) Gold

This find from a few months back just goes to show there's still some gold to be found in the wild.

I was a few hours late to the opening of the estate sale where I found this, so I assumed the Halloween die cuts I'd seen online were gone.  But I was surprised to find them still strewn about on a card table.

I found this one mixed among some lesser examples.  The price of $5 per diecut were high for the majority of them, but it made this 1950's Beistle a steal.  I actually ended up getting the lot of them for $5, I guess since it was late in the day.

 

It's fairly easy to date die cuts from Beistle, though some designs were produced for over a decade.  One-sided, embossed diecuts from Beistle generally date from the 1940's to early '50s with the heavier the embossing dating them to the earlier part of that period.  The company also used the "H.E. Luhrs" mark instead of "Beistle" in the earlier portion of that time frame.  

Henry Luhrs, son-in-law of founder Martin Beistle, became president of Beistle in 1941 and I suppose toyed around with the idea of changing the company name, though it remains Beistle to this day.