Steiff

The company's defining moment came in 1902 when Margarete's nephew Richard Steiff designed the Bear 55 PB, the world's first stuffed bear with movable arms and legs. The name encoded its specifications: 55 centimeters tall, P for plush, B for beweglich (movable). Richard presented the bear at the 1903 Leipzig Toy Fair, where it initially attracted little interest. Just before the exhibition closed, however, an American buyer ordered 3,000 pieces. The timing coincided with President Theodore Roosevelt's famous bear-hunting incident, and the "teddy bear" craze swept across both sides of the Atlantic. By 1907, Steiff was producing nearly a million bears per year.

To combat the flood of imitations that followed this success, Margarete's nephew Franz Steiff introduced the "Button in Ear" (Knopf im Ohr) in 1904, a small metal button fastened to each animal's left ear. Registered as an official trademark on 20 December 1904, it became one of the earliest brand identifiers in the toy industry and remains the company's signature mark today. The button's design has evolved over the decades, with different colors and materials signaling production era and edition type, making it an essential reference point for collectors and authenticators.

Steiff received the Gold Medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, where the company sold 12,000 bears. Margarete Steiff died in 1909, but the family continued to expand the business through the 20th century, adding new animal designs, limited editions, and licensed character products. Among the most notable of these were the Kalle Stropp and Grodan Boll dolls produced in the 1950s, based on the beloved Swedish radio and film characters created by Thomas Funck. Made in stuffed plush with felt clothing, these figures hold particular significance for Nordic collectors.

Steiff bears rank among the most actively traded collectibles at auction worldwide. Record prices include the Steiff Louis Vuitton bear, a gold-thread collaboration piece that sold for $2.1 million at Christie's Monaco in 2000, and the Titanic Mourning Bear from 1912, which fetched over $250,000 in 2023. On Nordic auction platforms, Steiff items appear regularly across houses such as Auktionshaus Stuber's Hammerschlag, Bishop & Miller, and Norrlands Auktionsverk. A pair of Kalle Stropp and Grodan Boll dolls from the 1950s reached 9,430 SEK, while an early 1910s textile doll sold for 7,300 SEK and a bear on wheels from the early 1900s brought 2,812 SEK. Most Steiff lots fall within the collectibles category, with condition, age, and the presence of the original ear button being the primary factors driving value.