Boxes, Molds & Pilot Pieces

Original wooden boxes, colorful modern packaging, and the rare molds used to create mechanical banks are prized artifacts in their own right. Pilot pieces—early test versions never intended for sale—add further depth and rarity to the world of bank collecting.
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Beyond the Bank: Boxes, Molds, and Pilot Pieces as Collector Treasures

Boxes and molds are items of ephemera that are collected alongside the banks.

Mechanical bank boxes were the packing materials for the shipment of the banks. The early ones by the antique manufacturers were made of wood and today many of the boxes are rarer than the banks they contained. Later and more recent banks have been packaged in cardboard and plastic and many collectors will seek out a modern bank only in its original packaging feeling it adds additional value. Others collect this modern packaging admiring the originality and colorfulness.

Molds are part of the production process for making a mechanical bank. Molds come in various forms the earliest stage is a mold made out of sand with the shape of the bank pieces impressed into the sand. At a later stage metal molds were created out of zinc and iron and pieces in iron to be assembled were created. Like the boxes, molds are harder to find than many of the banks that that they were used to make.

I would be remiss at this point not to mention pilot pieces. These are early non-production non- commercial versions of the banks that the manufacturers would create from unassembled pieces to test how the production was proceeding. Many of these pattern pieces have been assembled by collectors into complete banks and are sought after by other collectors.