Archery Craft Toronto

Archery Craft Toronto was a bow and arrow manufacturer based in Toronto, Ontario, which made archery equipment during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The company stopped producing new bows in the 1970s.

The company made a whole range of bows, from wooden flat bows to solid fiberglass bows to full wood/glass recurves. By the 1970s they were also making wood/fiberglass takedown recurves, as well as full-fiberglass takedown recurves.

As a company the bows are very rare. Some people (especially Canadians) collect the bows, so they are more likely to be bought by Canadians on auction websites. National pride and all that.

The wooden bows and the recurves are the most valuable, whereas the fiberglass bows are comparable to other fiberglass bows built around the same time period.

If the bow is from the 1950s or 1960s the bow will be stamped with two numbers:

The first number is a product number.
The second number tells you the poundage of the bow.

Normally many companies round the poundage of a bow up or down to an even number, eg. 38 or 40. Archery Craft Toronto was unusual in that they were often much more precise, giving a bow's poundage as exactly 39 lbs for example. This then confuses modern collectors who look at the two numbers stamped on bow, because they are so used to seeing the length of the bow and the poundage measured in even numbers.

During the 1970s Archery Craft Toronto switched to a different system, a 4 digit number for the model of the bow. Thus if it has a 4 digit number on an Archery Craft Toronto bow, you can be sure it was built during the 1970s.

Dating the precise the year of an Archery Craft Toronto bow is very tricky. Ideally you would want to find old archery magazines or advertisements for the company, showing the bow in question and the year it was published. This would give you a better idea of how to date the bow, although often you may have to resort to "Circa 1972" or your closest estimate.

Vintage arrows from Archery Craft Toronto can also be found, although since arrows are more likely to break over time they are considerably more rare.

Above: Black Prince, circa 1960s, Archery Craft Toronto