Shite in Miniature II

[bunglebus]

Anything will be an improvement. I'd probably try and heat up and straighten the roof, nothing to lose if it goes wrong anyway 

[flat4alfa]

Idea #324

[sierraman]

20 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

Idea #324

You read my mind! That’s what the leftovers will be making. 

The she’ll is straight now and in some primer. Obviously conventional would dictate it would be Red or Signal Yellow. No. This is Autoshite. It will be brown. 

[bunglebus]

Inspired by the ones @flat4alfa picked up recently, I grabbed a few more Lone Star Tuff Tots

From the tiny to the enormous, I saw a lot with some dark, grainy pictures and took a chance. Main prize was this Corgi Major Chubb Pathfinder Airport Crash Truck, quite a big title for a big vehicle

Aha, it DOES STUFF. Plugging in a PP3 saw nothing happening, the one video I can find of one seems to suggest there should be a separate hand operated pump and hose that connects at the back, then the siren goes off when water is flowing. I'll track down some washer pipe or similar and try it.

Even longer but not quite as heavy is this Corgi Major Discharge Dumper(!) with hand operated bits to drop a load(!), disconnect the cab and drop the jockey wheels

 

 

 

 

For some reason I image the driver has a Yorkshire accent

Also included was this Dinky Aveling Barford Diesel roller which feels heavy enough to actually work

And a Matchbox King Size Hatra Tractor Shovel 

 

[egg]

Hatra shovel with tyres not falling off miracle?!

[Mad Cyril]

Well I've finished the battered Mercury that was donated to my pile of jobs to do by Dick Longbridge a few months back.
It looked like it'd escaped the oval following a horrific roll...

...but the roof straightened out surprisingly well, new glass was available, and some wheels from Bunglebus finished the job off...

...I'm really chuffed with that and I've thoroughly enjoyed doing it.

Next, I'm moving on to this Escort which I 'customised' when I was about 10 years old...

...it's in a bad way though. Bent roof, cracked pillars, butchered rivets and sitting on a Corgi Rockets chassis (held together with Bluetac).

[bunglebus]

That Mercury's turned out really well, especially given how damaged it was. MK1 has a bit of a "Henry Hirise" look about it currently 

[bunglebus]

4 hours ago, egg said:

Hatra shovel with tyres not falling off miracle?!

They're a bit loose but stay in place at least long enough to take pictures 😉

[Datsuncog]

Wasn't entirely sure if I'd be able to make it in to the market this morning, but got up a bit earlier to sneak through the doors at 7.45.

Nemesis was already there, and bagsying vast amounts of diecast. He did say hello; he probably thinks I'm a right grumpy so-and-so, and to be fair he's not wrong these days.

So there were last week's Lesneys at £3, with a few additions I didn't recognise, plus a fresh batch of 50s/60s/70s/80s Corgi and Dinky at £10, which seemed a bit overpriced for most.

I did type up a lengthy live report, but Chrome then decided to refresh and eat it all just as I finished, except for the first five lines - just to taunt me.

With no time to re-type (and my smashed phone screen with blacked-out areas making it difficult to type anyway), I'm afraid I gave up for the day.

However, here's what there was today:

This Corgi Lincoln Continental limo was in good nick, and complete bar the battery cover underneath. One of the few that was worth the asking price; however it was snaffled by Nemesis.

Dinky Range Rover was in excellent shape too.

Land Rover also good,though missing its ladders.

These messily repainted items looked somewhat less worthy of a tenner, though...

Early Chevrolet Astro with red pre-Whizzwheels was a curiousity, though the engine cover hinge was broken, sadly.

Rambler Marlin was one of three on the stall; the two red versions had, like so many others in this collection, been dickied-up with rally-style waterslide transfers by a former owner.

The third was a two-tone silver and white version with a roofrack, and looked to be nearly pristine.

Also swiped by Nemesis. I believe this one was originally part of Corgi Gift Set 10, packaged with a pair of kayaks and a trailer, and is pretty rare since it was only on sale for a few months in 1968.

This Herald had some bumper issues...

Mustang Fastback in silver is a rarer colour variant from its first release in 1965; the stickies aren't original here.

Fiat 1800 is another unusual one - as well as being the first Italian car in the Corgi range (in 1960), it's in this odd two-tone pinky-lavender shade.

According to the big Van Cleemput book, these were painted mid blue, although "also known in light tan". This one is deep purpley-lavender on the roof, and pink on the body.

A quick look online shows they do exist in the shade, as well as other colour variations like mustard yellow, so I doubt it's worth squillions. Nice model, though.

Mod-ified Imp (ho ho) would probably display ok with the stickers off - and, crucially, at half the price.

No real change to the Lesney boxes from last week - a few gone, but mostly the same items.

There was a solitary 1/36 Corgi there, too - a French-market Pug 505 fire chief car.

Very good condition, but do I really need a third variant of this casting...? Probably not.

Not sure who makes this RM model, or even if it's that old, but it's huge at about 18" long.

There was also some Days Gone stuff kicking around, but no-one's here for that, are they?

So that was about it... nothing really on the other stalls, apart from this big (1/12?) Tamiya Renault F1 car on the Charity Stall.

I did come away with a couple of Lesneys, but again couldn't shake the feeling that the only stuff really worth the money had already been snaffled before I managed to get through the door.

If anyone's keen on the red-hub Ford GT, Ferrari Berlinetta, or Austin A55 Cambridge, they're all available at the £3 paid.

**BERLINETTA SOLD!!**

I've come back and re-edited this from yesterday with less of a humpy-head on: I can appreciate that the original post might have come across as needlessly abrupt, and can only apologise.

I'd really wanted to put together an upbeat market report and I think I had; so while losing half an hour's work might not seem that bad in the grand scheme of things, on top of a disastrous few weeks at work and at home where it seems I can do absolutely nothing right, the mobile browser fail kinda felt like another boot in the nads just when I needed it least.

But anyway. Ups and downs, hey? Cheers to everyone who PM'd me, I'm not in an unmanageable funk; just a bit down in the dumps.

(Which is something of a misnomer as a turn of phrase, since I loved going to the dump as a kid, ditto scrapyards - in fact, they were probably the places I was happiest.)

So! Better things to come? Here's hoping.

Til next week!

[flat4alfa]

[bunglebus]

I think market man has unfortunately got a bit carried away with his pricing. I walk away from Dinkys at £5 at the boot sale

[Amishtat]

52 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I think market man has unfortunately got a bit carried away with his pricing. I walk away from Dinkys at £5 at the boot sale

By contrast, they have to be pretty fucked before I leave them there for a fiver. Ten's a different matter though, there's quite a lot in DC's pictures that I'd like but not at that price. 

[egg]

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

I got a couple of Lesneys,just.

Green Ferrari please! Thanks for your efforts.

[bunglebus]

Fixerated. Just needed some contact cleaner in the switch

 

[flat4alfa]

I know that racket!  So it's the same chip that is in this.  It's a bit of a weedy siren for a massive airport tender...

The Pathfinder here is a silent one, it has a blanked-off battery compartment; so at some point they deleted the noise.  Might be the same time they changed the decals?  Can't think I would be happy in a plane, taxiing for take off and seeing 'CRASH TRUCK' written on the side...  not confidence inspiring!

Odd that both of the tenders have different siren to the Caprice

Which wails so much, the pets leave the house

[bunglebus]

Now this is funky. Politoys Polfi Toys Renault 17 is a perfect excuse to dig out my other makes for a comparison. RHD is surprising 

007 Renault 11 is far less exciting by comparison 

[flat4alfa]

19 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

007 Renault 11 is far less exciting by comparison 

17s don't split in half though.  11's have a habit of doing that

[barrett]

31 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Now this is funky. Politoys Renault 17 is a perfect excuse to dig out my other makes for a comparison. RHD is surprising 

 

That was momentarily confusing - I'd never seen that before, and it looks very crude for Politoys (even in the darkest days of Polistil they generally had a much better crack than that attempt). It appears it's actually a Polfi-Toys, made in Greece, and I suspect considerably rarer than any Politoys... nice find!

The R17 is another of those oddities which seems to have been modelled by just about every manufacturer, in every possible scale, in period.

[flat4alfa]

3 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

 

[bunglebus]

2 minutes ago, barrett said:

it's actually a Polfi-Toys, made in Greece

Yes - my phone corrected it for me. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...

[flat4alfa]

Apparently, I have a collection of Donkey Toys.

[Noel Tidybeard]

On 14/07/2021 at 18:49, bunglebus said:

A clean, late issue Corgi Renault 5

Nay, Nay, Mr Wilkes! the yellow one is the early edition, t'is the black one that is laterer

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

Nay, Nay, Mr Wilkes! the yellow one is the early edition, t'is the black one that is laterer

This one? 

Where does this one fit in?

[flat4alfa]

Even earlier, as it's got Whizzwheels style wheels

[flat4alfa]

Ignore that...  Delving deeper into the Corgi Catalogues

First issue 1977 as 293 Renault 5 TS and even made the cover

Then together with C428 Renault Police Car from 1978

Both deleted and replaced by C294 Renault Alpine for 1980-83 (but still had 'Renault 5 TS' on the base)

[ Scans courtesy of R Secker ]

[155V6]

On 7/13/2021 at 11:41 AM, flat4alfa said:

Please say that wasn't a Ballade....  

I've still got this LHD Acclaim if you're interested

Yours for the price of postage

[sierraman]

Bought this today for 50p, not sure what I’ll do there. Probable restoration. 

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, flat4alfa said:

[ Scans courtesy of R Secker ]

Sounds dodgy to me

[bunglebus]

CBA to rummage about in the stinking hot loft looking for cars, so here's a slightly shonky collage of Matchbox, Majorette and Polfi Toys Renaults. Colour choice is a popular one it seems

 

[flat4alfa]

38 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

CBA to rummage about in the stinking hot loft looking for cars, so here's a slightly shonky collage of Matchbox, Majorette and Polfi Toys Renaults. Colour choice is a popular one it seems

So it was only Majorette that got the rear corner windows correct then