These Vintage Christmas Displays Are Worth A Ton & You May Have Them Lying Around

You have to hand it to holiday decor. Whatever the reason for your holiday season, chances are, it gets a touch of added delight from holiday decor. Americans spend a surprising amount of their hard-earned money on holiday decorations each year, and it's not hard to see why.

Factors like economic uncertainty, political division, climate change, inflation, and tariffs threaten to impact family budgets and that sense of safety, security, and togetherness we all may crave even more around the holidays. Times can often feel tough. So there's just something special about a twinkling light here and a bit of whimsy there that brings a bit of warmth to the cold winter months, literally and figuratively. Of course, some vintage Christmas displays can also bring cold, hard cash.

You may remember Department 56 Christmas village displays from your youth, or perhaps you are now (or have always been) the provider of this particular bit of Christmas cheer. Department 56 Christmas village displays are comprised of jolly, ceramic structures lit from within. Some folks may even have permanent trauma surrounding bumping into a table and breaking a certain Christmas village ice-skating figurine in their youth. All the same, Department 56 Christmas village displays have been charming collectors and viewers of such collections since 1976, and some pieces and sets are now worth a small, sparkling fortune.

Department 56 gets its name from when it was a department as part of a larger floral and gift company in Minneapolis, called Bachman's. While at Bachman's, Department 56 housed the wholesale gifts and imports division, until it was spun off into its own company by founder, Ed Bazinet, in 1976.

Much like possibly valuable old Beanie Babies, the collectibility of Department 56 sets partly relies on their rarity, be it contrived or otherwise. Since the first "Original Snow Village" set was released in 1976, a variety of pieces and sets have been retired to make way for new products and series. Even by 1979, the first six pieces in the first snow village set were retired to make way for 12 new buildings, as well as accessories for the first set. Popularity, pieces, retirements, and sets only grew throughout the '80s, and reached a peak in the '90s, though may be seeing a resurgence today, with a running product count in the thousands.

Today, Department 56 is owned by Itasca, IL-based Enesco, but remains an Eden Prairie, MN-based company since 1991. Department 56 still releases new Christmas village sets, with many recognizable licenses like "The Grinch" villages, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" village, and the "Hot Properties" village series, which features pop cultural properties like the "Ghostbusters" firehouse, the "Beetlejuice" house, the "Friends" fountain, and the Rosebud Motel from "Schitt's Creek."

To be as clear as a December night in Bedford Falls, the original retail prices for Department 56 Christmas village pieces aren't exactly cheap. The pieces are usually collected slowly, over many holiday seasons, only for the villages to be fully arranged over a blanket of white quilt-batting "snow" and decorated with dollhouse pine trees once a year. As such, initial asking prices then and now can be anywhere around the $50, $150, or $200 marks.

Collecting Department 56 items might be a pricey pastime, but the resale value for some key items and complete sets may be one more reason the collections glitter and gleam like old (and valuable) aluminum Christmas trees. Today, collectors seek to purchase complete sets, or fill in the gaps of their own collections with missing structures. The secondhand market for Department 56 pieces thrives on sites like eBay and Amazon, and there are a few pieces most hunted for, and priced to match.

In November 2024, a '90s-era "Snow Village" collection sold on eBay for $1,500. The Mill building from the Victorian England "Dickens Village" collection sold for $1576.56 in October 2024. A boxed version of the Empire State Building from the "Christmas in the City" set sold for $1,350 in January 2025. A full set of Grinch Village figurines sold for $4004 in December 2024, proving that sometimes hearts grow three sizes during the holidays, and sometimes Christmas village prices do.