For about ten years the most modern thing in an American living room in December was a tree made of aluminum foil. It did not pretend to be a fir. It was silver, it came in a box, and it stood in front of the window catching colored light from a wheel on the floor. Then it went out of fashion so completely that by the late 1980s people were selling them at yard sales for pocket change.
It is back now, and the people who collect it are not joking. Neither are we. In a house of glass, post and beam, an aluminum tree looks more at home than a spruce ever did.
Where it came from
The Wisconsin Historical Museum, which has mounted a full exhibition on the subject, tells the story this way. In December 1958 Tom Gannon, the toy sales manager at the Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, saw a metal Christmas tree in a Ben Franklin store in Chicago. It was made by a Chicago firm, Modern Coatings. It was also expensive and awkward. Later accounts put the price at $75 or more.
Gannon took the idea home. An engineer named Richard Thomsen led the work on a cheaper version, and the company had it ready for the American Toy Fair in March 1959. Aluminum Specialty then made hundreds of thousands of trees in time for that Christmas. They sold for about $25. In 1960 the company gave them a name: Evergleam.
Two details of the design are worth knowing, because they are what you will look for in a box at an estate sale. The trunk is drilled with angled holes, and each branch slides into one. And each branch is stored in its own paper sleeve. Modern Coatings held the patent on both ideas, issued in July 1959, and Aluminum Specialty later licensed it.
How big it got
By the museum's account, sales peaked in 1964 and 1965, when Evergleam held 60 to 65 percent of the market in the United States and Canada. The trees were sold through Montgomery Ward, Ben Franklin and Woolworth's. Antique Trader counts more than 40 competing makers and puts Aluminum Specialty's own output at over a million trees.
Three out of four Evergleams were silver. The rest were green, gold or pink. They ranged from tabletop size to seven or eight feet. Later models had what the trade called pom-pom branches, with the needles crinkled and curled at the tip so that each branch ended in a burst.
Why there are no lights on it
Aluminum conducts electricity, so a string of lights on a metal tree is a real hazard. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has warned for decades never to use electric lights on a metallic tree, because a person can be electrocuted if the tree becomes charged.
The answer was the color wheel: a spotlight on the floor behind a slowly turning disc of colored plastic. The tree went red, then blue, then green, then yellow. Some owners added a motorized stand that turned the tree as well.
The warning still applies. Do not put plug-in lights on a vintage aluminum tree. Light it from the floor, the way it was designed.
What happened to it
The usual story blames a cartoon. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, first shown in December 1965, Lucy sends Charlie Brown out for a big, shiny aluminum tree, and he comes home with a small real one. The special is widely credited with ending the fad.
The evidence is weaker than the legend. Joe Kapler, a curator at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, told Wisconsin Public Radio that aluminum tree sales stayed strong after the special aired. The museum dates the trees' popularity to about 1972, and Antique Trader reports that the last Evergleams were made in 1971, after which the company went back to children's cookware. It looks less like a sudden death than a fashion that ran its course.
How it came back
In 2004 two Wisconsin photographers, Julie Lindemann and John Shimon, published Season's Gleamings: The Art of the Aluminum Christmas Tree, and the museum credits the book with reviving interest. The next year a rare seven-foot pink tree was reported sold online for $3,600.
Manitowoc has since claimed its invention. Each winter a volunteer effort called Evergleams on Eighth fills the windows of the historic downtown with hundreds of the trees. This season's display is scheduled to run from November 25, 2026, to January 3, 2027.
What to look for
Prices have moved a long way from the yard sale. Antique Trader's guide puts tabletop trees at $30 to $300 and full-size trees, five to eight feet, at $100 to $1,200. Color and pom-poms raise the price sharply; the guide cites a six-and-a-half-foot gold pom-pom tree at $4,050. Silver is the least expensive and pink the most. A working color wheel runs from $50 to $485.
Count the branches. Compare them with the holes in the trunk. A tree that is short a dozen branches will show it.
Look for the paper sleeves. They are the reason some trees still look new. Branches stored loose in a box are usually bent and thin.
Check for the box and the stand. Both add value, and the box often carries the model name and height.
Treat the color wheel as an old appliance. It has a motor, a hot bulb and a sixty-year-old cord. Have it looked at before you leave it running.
What goes on it
The ornaments of the period were Shiny Brites. Max Eckardt had been importing glass ornaments from Germany since about 1907. In 1937 he went into partnership with Corning Glass to make them by machine in the United States, and they were sold through Woolworth's for a few cents each.
They are easy to date. During the war the metal caps were replaced with cardboard and the silvering stopped, so wartime ornaments are clear glass. After the war the caps were crimped metal, stamped with the name and "Made in U.S.A.," and the boxes showed Uncle Sam shaking hands with Santa Claus. The designer Christopher Radko has sold new ornaments under the Shiny Brite name since 2001, so check the cap and the box before you pay a vintage price.
Single ornaments still sell for a few dollars to about $30. The box matters more than you would expect: collectors pay for a full set in its original carton, and one guide puts those at $20 to $110 depending on the era.
On an aluminum tree, less is better. Use one color of ornament, hang them toward the branch tips, and stop early.
How to set it up
Stand the tree in front of glass if you have it. Put the color wheel on the floor a few feet away, aimed up through the branches, and turn off the lamps. When the season is over, slide every branch back into its sleeve.
It was never meant to look like a tree. It was meant to look like 1960, and it still does.