Baseball Helmet Banks

I came across an auction recently where someone was auctioning an entire set of Major League Baseball Helmet banks, and thought I'd share the pictures since the banks are very good replicas of the teams batting helmets from the time they were issued (these appear to be from the late 1970's to early 1980's).

Here is a look at the American League teams:

It looks like they had 2 different White Sox and Twins helmets in their collection.

Here are the National League helmets:


Laich was the manufacturer of these helmets, and they also the company that has manufactured the ice cream sundae helmets. The picture below shows that the size of the bank helmet is almost identical to the ice cream sundae helmet.



Here is a look at the bottom of the bank compared to the ice cream sundae helmet:


The bank has a plastic stopper that can be opened to get the coins out. Since the banks had a separate section for the bottom of the bank, they were able to do something that couldn't be done with the ice cream sundae helmets - have the correct colored bill on the cap. The sundae caps unfortunately do not have separate colored bills.

The banks also had the correct front panel color for teams like the Orioles, Brewers, Expos and Padres who had a front panel that was a different color from the rest of the cap - another limitation that the sundae helmets were not able to overcome since the helmets were always just a single color.