Little Brother Rare Steiff Ocelot Ozelot Reclining Wild Cat All ID 1964-1967 ONLY!

I am delighted to offer this rare wild cat to you, but before I tell you about him, I want to start with saying what he is NOT, which is a leopard. Some people seem to have trouble distinguishing these two Steiff cousins, although they look different. The lying leopards are somewhat rare, but nothing like the ocelots! The latter were made only from 1964 to 1967, in only two sizes, and only reclining. How to tell the difference? The ocelots have orange eyes (and always plastic, not glass), and the leopards have green eyes, the earliest of which were glass. The ocelots are “clean-shaven;” the leopards have mutton-chop side burns. The ocelots’ tails are the same background color as their bodies at the tip; the leopards’ tails have a black tip.

I never know quite how to measure the reclining animals, but from outside front to outside rear paws, Ocelot measures about 8 1/2 inches, and he’s about 4 1/2 inches high from his lying surface to the top of his head. Neither of these measurements seems to be in accord with his 17-cm catalogued size (indicated by the “17” in his article number 2317,00). 😉

Ocelot is in very good condition. I have downgraded him from “excellent” because of his fading. His rosettes are not TOO much different from the black they once were, but his underlying color in two places was once darker than it is now. Those two areas are on the central portion of his face, extending down from between his eyes to the start of his nose (and his coral floss nose, itself) and his back (about an inch or so on either side of the seam), including the back of his head.

I have made these comments not because I knew Ocelot 50 years ago, 😉 but because his near-mint brother, who lives in my vitrine has such coloring. I don’t think there is anything OBVIOUSLY wrong with his coloring, but I am telling you what I see in the comparison. I think you might have realized that the floss of his nose is faded, since I am assuming you have, or must have seen, other animals with darker and shinier floss noses. Interestingly, Ocelot’s nostrils are still very apparent; the fact that they are not centered in his nose is the fault of the person at the factory who did the initial airbrushing. 🙂

Another thing that is now different from the way it was when Ocelot left Giengen is his (near perfect) chest tag. The tag was dangling from the end of a piece of string which once threaded tightly through the hole in the tag (not at all damaged)! It would have impossible to re-use the part of the string that remained and feed the unattached part back through his tag and to sew it into his chest. I had to snip off the remaining string and start all over.

I don’t have string exactly the same as the string Steiff used on chest tags, but I do have some embroidery floss that does not look much different. It is only because the floss looks different from what you typically see that you might have wondered about the chest tag. Other than that, there is no way to tell that the attachment is in any way re-done when you look at the tag. The only way to tell is to look at my creative behind-the-scenes work, none of which shows on the front of the tag.

I don’t know whether the original attachment was somewhat imperfect when Ocelot left Giengen or if it loosened during play. Because the tag, itself, is perfect and my new attachment is invisible, I am counting this very little in my evaluation of Ocelot’s condition.

Now I am getting down to being really nitpicky; I want to make one more comment about Ocelot’s nose. He is missing one whisker on each side; there are five on each side now, and there used to be six.

I mentioned that the Steiff ocelots were made only from 1964 to 1967. HOWEVER, it seems fairly likely that this cutie’s date of birth was in 1964, since his button is the older style of raised script with skinny letters. Starting in 1965, the button looked different. Given his rarity, this may not be a big deal, but I thought you might like to know.

I think Ocelot will be a fabulous addition to your collection if you like exotic and rare Steiff, or, like me, you are a fan of the cats, both domestic and wild. I think I have covered everything you could think to ask, but please write if you have a question.

WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO DO ABOUT OCELOT OR ANY OF MY OTHER STEIFF ITEMS, PLEASE BE SURE TO SEE THE ARTICLE I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT STEIFF ID FRAUD—INCLUDING COUNTERFEIT CHEST TAGS—(AND OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR COLLECTORS). YOU WILL FIND THE LINK ON THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF MY SHOP HOME PAGE UNDER “FAVORITE LINKS.” IF YOU HAVE NOT LOOKED AT IT RECENTLY, I UPDATED AND EXPANDED IT IN MARCH, 2023.