Datsuncog

You might be waiting a while, but fair enough - noted!

Yes - the Dinky Cadillac was bagged also. Great detail, front and back. Some paint underneath too - might clean off. And presumably 'MT' is the initials of a previous owner?

I also bought this. I'm a bit of a sucker for these French Dinky repros. And I do like both Simcas and estate cars. Opening doors! Opening tailgate! Sliding rear window in the tailgate! Fancy. It's a little shonky, but a nice touch. Quite a detailed underneath too. And details of the fancy bits. Many fancy bits. Table de camping? Well I never. It folds up! Unbelievably tiny and fragile, it's hard to believe this lasting for more than two minutes in the hands of the average eight year old. Wow. A keeper, for now anyway!

So I nabbed this MB38 Ford camper. I had a so-so one of these before, with a damaged wheel - but this is very clean. Annoyingly, the blister card has been opened without very much care. And one side's noticeably darker and more yellowy than the other, possibly from UV light effects - maybe left in a shop window for a prolonged period of time? But it's very, very clean otherwise. £5 paid - I kinda like this one, though I don't love it. If anyone fancies saving me from myself, it's available...

Actually, that was pretty much it. There was nothing at all of interest on the Charity Stall, while the Irish Gifts stall promised another Hundred Hot Wheels - but not til later. Apparently another few Vanguards are due for next week, too. I'd not noticed this before - interesting, though pricey. I spent quite a long time waiting for Alan to set up his Emporium, mindful of his promise from last week about new cars... But there weren't, it was mostly just rubbishy no-name stuff. Maybe this was them? Yeah. No. So, running late, I had to skedaddle at this point... But we're not done just yet!

The main event - the old stuff. (Rubbish panoramic effort) The knackered Dinky Rolls Royce Phantom V would probably make a good restoration, with some new brightwork. Corgi Standard Vanguard MkIII was a repaint; Dinky Singer Gazelle seemed to have had a mishap with some red ink. French Dinky 'Cibie' truck was part of you-know-who's haul. My detailed pics of this one don't seem to have come out. Budgie Leyland Octopus coal lorry next to it was clean. Dinky Herald playworn but original. Dinky Transit had some resto parts fitted: Not the best rendering, these. Also bagged by M' Learnéd Friend. Dinky Cadillac was good, though. Closer inspection indicates the roof has been repainted, though. Corgi Bedford TK giraffe truck was very tidy; even had its mirrors attached, though no livestock within. Part of Former-Nemesis' box also. Some of these 1930s/40s Dinkys were quite presentable... Not quite my thing, but appealing nonetheless. F-N took a fair few of these too. Impy MkX was a little chipped, but better than many. Also making its way back to Chez Nemesis. Ditto this Dinky Mercedes with the working lights... (But no battery cover) And this was definitely the star of the show - the Dinky Supertoys Corgi Major Commer DECCA Radar Unit. He seemed genuinely thrilled with this. Good luck to him. Dinky Vanguard I has come home with me, pending onward transmission to Caledonia - while the Minx Series VIII was quite appealing too. Corgi Thunderbird a bit bashed, sadly. Dinky Range Rover with swapped wheels was a bit rough. Dinky Humber Hawk in an aftermarket box was perhaps a bit overpriced at £20. The Lone Star RM behind was also £20. These RMs were all repaints - Glasgow & Kelvin were Seepol items; the London Transport in the middle is Dinky, though considerably adapted with better wheels, transfers and paint detail. This Lesney Fleetliner was also very nicely detailed, with tiny rubber-shod wheels added - possibly by the same hand: Sadly, the paint's got chipped. Mercedes box van is by Wiking. Phew! Is that it? I think that's it. Well, for this stall, anyway...

Some more stuff started appearing up top, too: Alongside the Superkings London buses, some tinplate items. This was nice; no maker shown though. Two more big 1/18 Corgi F1 cars - another McLaren and the JPS Lotus: The Nemesis took the JPS - as it had one red McLaren wheel, and he needed one for the minty, yet tri-wheeled, McLaren he picked up a fortnight ago. Two Dinky repaints also surfaced; fairly strong money at £20 each for this Foden Chain Truck and Leyland Octopus. Nemesis took the Leyland, even though the rear load bed was loose. (I'm probably have to stop calling him that now, aren't I?) Boxed/ blister pack buses were interesting too. Despite being mint and boxed 70s Matchbox, these don't really grab me - I can't find it in me to get all that excited about variations on the MB17 Londoner bus. Some of the card artwork is nice, though. Mandarin and Tins Toys are makers previously unknown to me, so that was kinda interesting. Also unusual (though not terribly appealing) was this... I've never heard of Hartoy, or their "Fantastic Set 'O' Wheels" range, but... The small print on the back seems to indicate that these are repacked Lledo Days Gone, brought over to the US by a Florida distributor. Even though the packaging uses the UK spelling of the word 'favourite'. Great, more names to hate on. Corgis were really nice, but I decided not to go for them today - two Mercedes School Buses and a TR7. From 1973, apparently. Fifty years old. Crumbs. On to the last lap...

So then, retracing my steps a little... The way things are, I'm getting in kinda early and things don't tend to be set up. Which means that, on arrival, the stall looked a bit like this... Mmm. More and more stuff then got thrown out onto the stall top, and I did my best to group it and tidy it up a bit for photos - until it looked like this: MoYs and EFEs on the table, plus a stray Days Gone - brief glance but NO. 1980s Corgi Classics and early 1990s Matchbox Collectibles of slightly more interest; also Oxford stuff and a smattering of plastic HO gauge stuff. Two 'Great Beers of the World' commercials and a showman's traction engine were the sum total of the Matchbox. Cheapo-looking remote control truck with multiple trailers kinda looks like fun, though. Mobil Corgis were good, though I've previously owned these and sold them on before... Hang on, these might be mine, actually! Big Joal Wallace Arnold Volvo coach was £20. Repro Atlas Dinkys were, once again, £10 each. I already have the Honda; it's just lovely. Lone Star Routemaster tooling clearly dug out to capitalise on the 1981 Royal Wedding... And I don't know what's going on here, but it seems to be quite wrong. Great big no-name plastic Duple was more in focus in real life. PN? NP? Maybe someone knows this maker's monogram? Another big bus of no clear parentage, this time a boxed Greyhound with friction drive. 'Made in Hong Kong' the only clue we're getting. Unfortunately, my phone started going screwy around this time, and a number of pics were taken but saved themselves as blank, for reasons unclear... So I'll try and see what I can salvage here...

So, I'm completely out of whack here, as some of my photos from earlier didn't take and then the forum site kept glitching and going blank on me every time I tried to type on my phone, which was frustrating... then I had to hammer back down the road home and log on for a meeting (because, like, work) and then we had Diecast Confidential, and... well, I'll need to rewind a bit here and see where we're at. Cos we're not done yet. Oh no.

Yeah, I think someone's been tinkering with this one too. It's not very well focused - but the front wheel on the other side seems to be the same as the ones on the police version below. Not the worst thing, but a bit confusing! Otherwise, all the bits seemed to be there to complete a restoration.

Ah, it's all about the cut 'n' thrust - where would Peter Pan be without Captain Hook? Batman without The Joker? Spongebob without Squidward? Everyone needs a Nemesis... Ah now... Well, interestingly, he didn't show up until well after 8 today - by which time I'd already taken a load of pics, made a few purchases, taken a turn round the rest of the market (nothing of interest), got a coffee and was busy resizing pics and tapping away at my screen. Then I saw the message about the Kelvin RM and Dinky Vanguard S1 come through, so trotted back over to see what was what - and there he was, handing over a wodge of cash for a box of about 15 models; mostly Dinky stuff but some Corgi and other items too. Initially he seemed a smidge taken aback, and asked if I was in late today too? I assured him that no, I'd already had a good look through everything earlier on, and had got all I personally wanted. He then told me that he'd actually left it a bit later to come in today - because he didn't want me to think that he was in competition with me, and wanted to head off any potential conflict. Which was jolly thoughtful of him, and gave me a twinge of regret at some of my previous rather huffy postings. I'll not lie, I began to worry that he'd found this thread online... So then we got onto the whys and wherefores of why we collect stuff, and yes - he says he is buying this stuff for himself, not for flipping. He was over the moon at finding the Dinky Commer DECCA unit, and the other Dinky items. And rightly so. And then he explained why he was here every week. Like so many of us, he amassed a lot of toy cars as a kid. LOTS. Bags and bags of them throughout the '60s and early '70s. He told me that his mother worked at the Spot-On factory on the Castlereagh Rd, and staff had the opportunity to buy up imperfect seconds in bags of five for £not that much. Which was great, until he reached his early teens... and, as he told it, he started getting stick from his mates for being into toy cars. So, seemingly to prove he wasn't still a wee kid playing with wee cars, he said that he lined them all up... and put a hammer through every one of them. Then threw them all in the bin, where his father later found them. Oooft. Now that's the sort of nightmare scenario which absolutely gives me the cold sweats. I can't even imagine how he feels about that. So years passed, and then towards the late '80s he found himself at a toy fair... and a lot of those memories came back. And he's been collecting ever since. He must have a helluva collection by now. And, rather like me, it's the thrill of the unexpected which brings him along to the market each week. Sure, anyone can go online and buy some diecast, but there's no surprises that way (or no good ones, anyway). With the market, you never know what you're gonna get. I've said here before that, as a kid, two of the highlights of my year were a toy & model fair at the local leisure centre around Easter time, and my primary school's May Festival which involved secondhand stalls in the assembly hall - including a toy stall. I knew that both of them would have diecast, and plenty of them. But which ones? What would I find that I didn't even know existed before? The excitement came from the not-knowing, from the potential for an utterly thrilling find. I would nearly make myself sick with nervous anticipation the night before either of those once-a-year events. While I don't quite struggle with involuntary emeticism in advance of the Friday market these days, I do get a bit of a flutter on a Thursday night. A low-level sensation of latency. What's gonna be in the boxes? A load of ratty Days Gone? Or some minty Spot-On? It's a helluva dopamine rush, going through those market doors each Friday. I'm a lazy shite, so it takes a lot to turf me out of bed before I absolutely have to be up. But, the way I feel it, it is a lot. And when something of interest is suddenly spied on the stall, it totally feels worth it. And today, I think he got that thrill from the Dinky Commer. A few months ago, I got it from that amazing Gamda Koor Impala (and also the Siku Transit the other week). Just the feeling of connecting with a toy, and a certain sensation of plucking diamonds from the rough. He does seem like a genuinely nice fella, and I kinda feel bad for playing him up as a cartoon villain for the LOLs. He's no different from any of us; a collector with a deep and abiding love of old diecast. He just appears to have rather more disposable income than I can muster on any given Friday! As an additional interesting point, I gave him a bit of my background (including my own very similar regrets at building a 'toy scrapyard' and the bitter shame of putting dozens of my Matchbox and Corgi through my father's bench vice), and I mentioned the model shop where I used to work in the mid-90s. Yes, it turns out he knows the owner of the shop very well, and often meets up with him for a chinwag. So we had a bit of a catch-up about the people who we knew through that channel, and what they were all doing now. So - in the end he had to run, as he was parked in a time-limited space and didn't want to be ticketed. And I just about had time to scoop up a couple more purchases, taking up the last of my cash reserves, before I had to scarper too... Yeah. I'd say he's very much one of us.

It's not sealed, annoyingly - but I bought it for a fiver anyway. Paintwork is minty, though on extracting it from the blister there's quite a lot of UV darkening to one side and part of the rear of the plastic camper body - the side I couldn't see, of course. Might respond to some peroxide and sunlight, maybe? I'd planned on keeping this one for myself, as I'm unlikely to turn up a cleaner example without resorting to megabucks, but as ever... these things are kinda fluid. It's not like I don't have enough Matchbox!

Daaah, sorry - was already home before I saw this! But will see if he still has it next week, if you're super-keen? Sure thing - I nabbed that one reasoning that someone here would probably want it! There are a few marks here and there, but it should probably display alright. I'd hoped it might be cheap, but it seems that all the loose stuff was £5 today. Does that work ok for you, @Split_Pin? It's a Lone Star Impy... also picked up by The Nemesis, I'm afraid! Not super-cheap at £5, but was complete and quite appealing...

No, Humber's £20 'cos it's boxed. I know... but it's not really an argument I feel up to having this morning. Right! Gotta dash as I already know I'm gonna be late getting home and logging on... But some nice items procured for folks! Catch you on the flip side...

Some scruffy Dinkys: Banger spec Rolls. Not really worth a fiver, even with repro bits added. Humber was nice, though. Corgi T-bird a bit ruffled...

Scratch-built Leyland bus: One that maybe @quicksilvermight be able to ID?

Dinky Cadillac? Still here! Probably a fiver on it. Few nicks in it but good shape overall.

Not a one - sorry!

Apparently not - did have quite a illuminating conversation with him today, though...

Also bought up by The Nemesis, I'm afraid. It was nice, but no longer sealed - and I've already got one without the packaging!

Ten of your English pounds on that!

I've no doubt! Nemesis bought this 'un - came away with a large box of stuff in exchange for more £20 notes than I could conceivably muster...

This one? £10 on it. Also this one:

Both gone, I'm afraid! Broadcasting truck missing its radar; blue car was light-up Dinky Mercedes.

Sure thing - the Kelvin RM is a repaint of a Seerol, if that makes a difference? Bit of a gluebomb, really. Vanguard is in nice nick, though!