A vintage Union Products haunted-house blow mold sold for $527 in October 2024, according to Antique Trader’s own reporting on the blow-mold market. A comparable Bayshore haunted-house piece cleared $300-plus in a 2025 sale. Those aren’t outlier prices for pristine, rare pieces at a specialty auction — they’re the kind of numbers turning up on eBay, where a scuffed, sun-faded plastic decoration that most families would have set at the curb a decade ago is now being actively bid on. If there’s a cracked plastic witch or ghost sitting in your attic from the 1950s or ’60s, it’s worth an actual look before Halloween cleanup this year.

Who actually made these things

Antique Trader’s piece traces the collectible market back to three manufacturers that dominated mid-century blow-mold production: Empire Plastics, known for glowing jack-o’-lanterns and its 1960s Empire Witch on Broom; General Foam Plastics, recognized for large light-up ghosts and a Grim Reaper figure; and Union Products, whose “classic designs” — the same company, notably, that made the pink flamingo lawn ornament — anchor a lot of the higher-end sales. Knowing the manufacturer matters for value: a piece stamped or attributable to one of these three names carries a documented collector history that an unmarked or off-brand blow mold doesn’t.

What the actual sale prices look like

Antique Trader’s reporting lays out a real price range rather than a single headline figure, and the spread is the useful part. A General Foam Grim Reaper typically sells in the $100 to $250 range. Empire Plastics figures — Dracula, a ghost holding a pumpkin, Frankenstein’s monster — have sold anywhere from just under $100 to the mid-$200s depending on condition. Tico Toys witch figures have moved on eBay for $100 to $300 as recently as 2025. The Union Products haunted house at $527 and the Bayshore haunted house above $300 sit at the top of that range, and both are larger, more sculptural pieces rather than single-figure decorations — scale and detail appear to matter as much as brand name.

Condition drives the spread within each of those ranges more than anything else. Antique Trader’s reporting is consistent on this point: original paint without heavy fading, no cracks or repairs, and — ideally — the original light cord and bulb intact all push a given piece toward the top of its price band. A blow mold with sun-bleached color or a hairline crack from decades of freeze-thaw storage lands at the bottom.

What to check before you toss one

A few practical checks separate a genuinely valuable piece from an ordinary reproduction. Original blow molds from the Empire, General Foam, and Union Products era are typically marked on the underside or base with a manufacturer’s name or logo molded directly into the plastic — a detail worth checking before assuming a piece is unmarked and therefore unidentifiable. The plastic itself also tends to be noticeably heavier and thicker than modern reproductions, which are often made with thinner, lighter material to cut manufacturing costs. Original electrical cords, where present, are usually cloth-wrapped rather than the molded rubber cords used on contemporary decorations — a small detail, but one collectors and buyers both look for as a quick authenticity signal before getting into a deeper condition assessment.

Why this is a fall story, specifically

Blow-mold pricing isn’t flat year-round — collector demand and sale activity cluster around the season the decorations are actually meant for, which means late summer into October is when both buyer interest and asking prices tend to peak. Antique Trader’s framing of the category as “the comeback kids of Halloween décor” reflects a broader collectibles pattern: plastic yard decorations that were mass-produced and treated as disposable in their own era are exactly the objects that become scarce a few decades later, once most of them have been thrown away, cracked in storage, or simply lost to time.

That scarcity, combined with a strong nostalgia pull toward mid-century Halloween imagery, is what’s pushing pieces like the Union Products haunted house past the $500 mark. Before donating or discarding an old plastic figure this season, it’s worth checking the base or bottom of the piece for a manufacturer’s name — Empire, General Foam, or Union Products — and weighing its condition against the ranges above. A decoration that’s been gathering dust since the Eisenhower or Kennedy administration might be worth considerably more sitting in an auction listing than it ever was lighting up a front yard.