The following is my edited and re-worked version of a media report of what could be either a fascinating story or just a cynical marketing ploy to drum up business. It is based on an article produced for the BBC in 2011.
What became the famous Steiff Bear Company was originally established by seamstress Margarete Steiff in Germany in the 19th Century.
In 1880, needing a present for a nephew, she found a pattern for a toy elephant and made it from soft felt. Drawn to how soft and cuddly they were, children in the neighbourhood were soon asking for elephants too. She started to make the elephants alongside her dressmaking business but it was her nephew Richard Steiff who is thought to have come up with the idea of a toy bear.
As a student at art college in Stuttgart he used to visit the zoo and sketch the bears. At the zoo they had cross-bred brown bears with polar bears and these may have been the seed of the inspiration for the first life-like toy bear. Events on another continent however may have been the catalyst for Richard and his Ursus idea.
It all goes back, allegedly to President Theodore Roosevelt in the United States. In 1902 he was invited on a hunt and was presented with a captured and bound bear for him to shoot. He declined and the story made the headlines.
Simultaneously, inspired by this moral stand, Steiff and an American toy manufacturer brought out soft toys under the title of "Teddy's Bear" in or around 1902 to 1903.
The Steiff Bear was exhibited at a buyers fair in Leipzig unromantically called PB-55 although logically referring to its height and with P for plush and B for beweglich, German for moveable.
What was thought to be the world's first teddy bear was not at all well received by the market and in frustration the display bears were reputedly sold to a Stateside broker who thought that they would sell better in the US and so placed an order for 3000 of the initial bear,
The premises of the Steiff business could not cope and they had to build a new factory in which to make the bears.
In 1903, 3,000 teddy bears by the then fledgling manufacturer Steiff were sent by Transatlantic sea-freight from Germany to America. The Steiff archives have copies of orders right from the beginning. The orders were made and there have been claims that examples of the packaging materials existed from when they were packed and shipped.
The bears never arrived.
In the Steiff museum, in the German town of Giengen, the mystery of the missing bears is explained to the visiting children with a tale that they were lost at sea.
The idea of shipwrecked teddy bears captures the imagination, but is it true?
In fact, researchers have been unable to prove that the order existed in the first place as there are no records held by any shipping companies nor customs and excise departments in either the country of origin or at the destination.
Given the subsequent rise to exceptional collectability of Steiff Bears it is now believed that as the bears were the first ever made they would now be the most valuable in the world.
So what happened to them?
The mystery, although undoubtedly newsworthy in 1903 did not surface as a story until 1953 which coincidentally marked the 50th anniversary of the teddy bear. A clever employee of the marketing department was writing a little festival book and that was the first time the story came up.
It may, for all of its mystery and sensationalism have just been a good marketing idea.
This fictional basis would appear to be supported by the fact that if they had been shipped, why have none ever appeared in attics or auction houses?
The construction of the bear may have been its downfall in terms of survival to the present day. The arms and head and legs were jointed to the body with strings making them susceptible to breakage.
Sales of teddy bears remain strong even after the heyday of teddy bear auctions in the 1990s when 1,500 people went to Christie's bear auctions.
Collectors and fans of the PB-55 still hold out for the emergence of one of their number for public sale and many appeals have gone out to householders to look out at home and in attics to see if there is a strange looking bear knocking around.
By way of guidance for potential treasure hunters, in addition to the dark colour, the elusive bear, unlike the characteristic of subsequent Steiff Bears has no button in his ear - the buttons only being sewn in from 1904.
Teddy bear enthusiasts are able to buy a limited edition replica of the PB-55 bear online for £399 but if any originals were to be found then they would be expected to break all existing world records without question.
The current world record is over £180,000.
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