Shite in Miniature II

[Datsuncog]

10 hours ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

That's a poor attempt by Solido to recreate the Beaubourg Mini, especially as it is in 1/16th scale.

Vitesse did a much better job with their 1/43rd version. The model has a Paris number plate because it was made to celebrate the Pompidou Centre, which is some times called the Beaubourg as it was built on the Beaubourg Plateau

Polistil did one in 1/25th. I've never seen on of these so I guess it is probably a rare thing.

 

Nice, never knew about that one!

Seems that the Beaubourg was a special edition of 100 offered in France in 1977, but the decals were an optional extra at FF1700 more, so not all of them came stickered up.

Appears there's only one known running survivor; here's some bonus terrible photos of this rough example that cropped up on LeBonCoin about ten years ago from at an estate disposal sale, which I just stole from a French Mini enthusiast forum:

https://minisaddict.superforum.fr/t13929-une-mini-beaubourg-de-77-sur-lbc

(I know you know all this already MMM3, just thought others here might be interested too!)

I don't even remember seeing the inferior Solido 1/16 version, let alone the Vitesse or Polistil renderings, so it seems to be a real rarity every which way.

[bunglebus]

Got the Golf from the new Matchbox set, by buying a complete set online for the same price people are asking for the Golf. I'll be selling the rest if anyone wants any

[ambassador84]

2 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

The price disparity in Poundland is frustrating - B&M also charge more, but I think it's only a difference of 10p (£1.79 vs £1.69). My thinking is that Matchbox sells more slowly than Hot Wheels nowadays as there seems to have been a switchover in brand awareness (possibly due to Mattel advertising Hot Wheels on YouTube and Netflix, but not Matchbox - and hardly helped by the five wilderness years when Tesco held the UK Matchbox monopoly), so retailers probably can't get the same bulk purchase discounts from the distributor.

The only silver lining with Poundland is that sometimes they have offers through their Perks loyalty app which knocks 50p off - Hot Wheels at £1 and Matchbox at £1.50 are a bit more palatable, though I did kinda lose the run of myself last year with Hot Wheels when they were on special offer... the app terms and conditions have since been updated to say you can only buy a maximum of three items on offer in any one transaction; that's probably my fault they've had to add that!

And this time two years ago one of the Belfast branches of Poundland got themselves very confused and accidentally put out a load of then-new releases on clearance:

It took them a few days to realise their mistake, and I did quite well out of it...

So did a few other folks on here who were happy to take the duplicates!

I Remember a few of the Poundland in my area offering Matchbox for just 50p for nearly a week before they realised their mistake so must have been a widespread issue! I don't mind 10 of 20p differences in price between retailers but 50p an item soon adds up. Tis the reason I walked out of a Morrisons yesterday which had two unopened cases of 2025 Case H Hot Wheels empty handed. I could have filled my basket but the Yorkshire in me stood firm at not paying £2.15 each for the privilege when they are so much cheaper elsewhere. If it costs more than £2 I don't buy it! 😅😅

[MiniMinorMk3]

34 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Appears there's only one known running survivor; here's some bonus terrible photos of this rough example that cropped up on LeBonCoin about ten years ago from at an estate disposal sale, which I just stole from a French Mini enthusiast forum:

 

https://minisaddict.superforum.fr/t13929-une-mini-beaubourg-de-77-sur-lbc

(I know you know all this already MMM3, just thought others here might be interested too!)

I don't even remember seeing the inferior Solido 1/16 version, let alone the Vitesse or Polistil renderings, so it seems to be a real rarity every which way.

Thanks for finding a picture of an actual car. I searched for about 15 minutes and nothing turned up.

I've had a couple of the Vitesse versions. 

[Tenmil Socket]

18 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Yep Majorette XR3

Didn’t pick one of these up recently?

I went back for it but at a fiver it wasn’t in the best condition but in hindsight I should have just bought it… I spent far more than that on beer and in the arcade!

It's only 30 minutes away and I want to return anyway because I discovered there’s another floor!

 

[Tenmil Socket]

Here’s what I bought:

 

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, Tenmil Socket said:

 

That Majorette CTi with trailer looks good, as do the Matchbox Convoys. Looks like the kind of place I could spend hours in!

I did indeed find a Majo XR3, and very nice it is too

A definite improvement on my other two

 

[Tenmil Socket]

30 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

That Majorette CTi with trailer looks good, as do the Matchbox Convoys. Looks like the kind of place I could spend hours in!

I did indeed find a Majo XR3, and very nice it is too

A definite improvement on my other two

 

I prefer the wheels on red one. I should of just bought it but I couldn’t bring myself to pay a fiver for it, plus the seller had labelled the cabinet as ‘barn finds’.

[Datsuncog]

1 hour ago, Tenmil Socket said:

the seller had labelled the cabinet as ‘barn finds’

No lowball offers, he knows what he's got... 🤨

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Quite a lot of the stuff in that cabinet isn't a Ford, either 😆)

[bunglebus]

Found out the Majorette trailer I got recently, should be behind the Mercedes crew cab

[Tenmil Socket]

20 hours ago, Tenmil Socket said:

Didn’t pick one of these up recently?

I went back for it but at a fiver it wasn’t in the best condition but in hindsight I should have just bought it… I spent far more than that on beer and in the arcade!

It's only 30 minutes away and I want to return anyway because I discovered there’s another floor!

 

Did anyone notice the asbestos in the chemistry set?

 

[bunglebus]

Very odd but pleasing haul from the boot sale this morning 

[sierraman]

14 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Found out the Majorette trailer I got recently, should be behind the Mercedes crew cab

Is it supposed to be a welfare hut or something? 

[MiniMinorMk3]

22 hours ago, Tenmil Socket said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Tenmil Socket said:

Did anyone notice the asbestos in the chemistry set?

 

Me and my brother had a Merit set that had all sorts of chemicals in that kid would probably not get their hands on today. I do remember mixing the copper sulphate with water and then evaporating the water away until it got to the point of chrystallisation. The other thing I remember is heating up the sulphur until it melted into a dark orange blob. We could have probably poisoned the whole street with the stuff in the set.

As for the asbestos, at school we were given bits of asbestos paper to stick in the flame of a Bunsen burner to show us how that miracle stuff had great fire retardant properties. 

[Datsuncog]

2 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Very odd but pleasing haul from the boot sale this morning 

Very nice!

That big plastic friction-drive Corvette looks familiar - think I may have had one in dark blue as a kid, though from memory the bonnet opened (shonkily) and I don't think that one looks like it does?

Juniors DBS and S-Type control car are two good finds also!

[Split_Pin]

Yep good find on the S type control car! Nice 1/36 Corgi 2CV as well!

[bunglebus]

Alrighty then, here are some of this morning's finds. It was almost all Corgi for some reason, with just two Majorettes 

Can't remember the name of this Matchbox series with the eye watering paint and barcode on the base. Intercom City, says it right on the base

Staying with Matchbox, one of the more unusual colour combination caravans

Looking closer, it still has the metal tow hook of the last car it was attached to, snapped off in the loop

Looks pretty good behind this RS2000 I got off Facebook 

Oddball Hot Wheels was a one time only release for McDonald's in 1999. Reminds me of Cadzilla from the back

A much more elderly HW in the form of this Torero

Another example of the 80s Corvette with interesting interior 

Rockets Jag was a decent score

Some little blighter had stuffed a lump of plasticine inside this Whizzwheels trailer, took me ages to break it all out

Noticed this unusual 2CV and ended up buying the whole tray of mostly Corgis, more in a bit

A quid for a Matchbox Beetle makes me happy

But not as happy as the other one which came off Facebook with the RS2000. Very unusual version of the custom Volkswagen. This is either an early Flying Colors or a promotional 

Couldn't resist this absolutely terrible 3 door Sierra,  just so I could share it with you all

Dinky Jeep is I think a very good repaint

Having sold all my Five Winders, I found another I'd never seen

Here are perhaps the better scores from the tray of Corgis, fresh from an adventure in the kitchen sink. This one looks smart, it is a nicely done repaint that's been re-riveted 

This one appears original 

Consul definitely isn't!

And nor is this poor Impala

Big tin snail was a nice find, took me a moment to remember pushing down on the front suspension opens the bonnet. I had the yellow one as a kid

Race car transporter is merely a donor for that slide out tray/ramp thing

The other Majorette is the big ol' Blazer

These last three are the most interesting (to me anyway), and this is my favourite, possibly of the year so far. I cannot seem to find any info on this plastic Playart Commer with a switched electric motor and a little pin that folds down, presumably so it will run along a slot car track

How that has survived, unbroken in a tub of tat I don't know, but it can spend its retirement in safety now.

Big Corvette is a Jimson

This last one was spotted by the Mrs, and is dated 1963. Seems that almost all the others for sale on the interweb are in America, as you would expect from a Mattel product 

[Split_Pin]

There was a Russian guy on Marketplace (username in Cyrillic gave that away) selling antiques and a lot of 1/18 cars.

This UT BMW caught my eye. These standard versions are quite hard to find and normally very expensive but a ruddy great crack on the windscreen meant he wanted £30. I already have a touring car M3 version with a missing mirror and I planned to use the glass from that. However the more I thought about it the more I was convinced the screens wouldn't be interchangeable. There's a lot of other differences between the M and standard version.

I met him on a pre-arranged street corner in the middle of Barrhead which gave my wife a bit of worry but in the end he was just a young bloke in a Fiat Doblo with his Mrs. Nice chap, all good.

I took it apart to see if I could make the crack less hideous with Glue n' Glaze and at least have the 2 pieces aligned. It now looks a lot better and I've decided not to sacrifice the other car for the time being.

These UTs have proper rack and pinion steering by the way!

[Lord Sterling]

18 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

There was a Russian guy on Marketplace (username in Cyrillic gave that away) selling antiques and a lot of 1/18 cars.

This UT BMW caught my eye. These standard versions are quite hard to find and normally very expensive but a ruddy great crack on the windscreen meant he wanted £30. I already have a touring car M3 version with a missing mirror and I planned to use the glass from that. However the more I thought about it the more I was convinced the screens wouldn't be interchangeable. There's a lot of other differences between the M and standard version.

I met him on a pre-arranged street corner in the middle of Barrhead which gave my wife a bit of worry but in the end he was just a young bloke in a Fiat Doblo with his Mrs. Nice chap, all good.

I took it apart to see if I could make the crack less hideous with Glue n' Glaze and at least have the 2 pieces aligned. It now looks a lot better and I've decided not to sacrifice the other car for the time being.

These UTs have proper rack and pinion steering by the way!

That's really nice. I think I'll be looking for one of these before too long.

[danthecapriman]

38 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

There was a Russian guy on Marketplace (username in Cyrillic gave that away) selling antiques and a lot of 1/18 cars.

This UT BMW caught my eye. These standard versions are quite hard to find and normally very expensive but a ruddy great crack on the windscreen meant he wanted £30. I already have a touring car M3 version with a missing mirror and I planned to use the glass from that. However the more I thought about it the more I was convinced the screens wouldn't be interchangeable. There's a lot of other differences between the M and standard version.

I met him on a pre-arranged street corner in the middle of Barrhead which gave my wife a bit of worry but in the end he was just a young bloke in a Fiat Doblo with his Mrs. Nice chap, all good.

I took it apart to see if I could make the crack less hideous with Glue n' Glaze and at least have the 2 pieces aligned. It now looks a lot better and I've decided not to sacrifice the other car for the time being.

These UTs have proper rack and pinion steering by the way!

Nice job fixing that. What a massive shame it got broken in the first place though as that’s a lovely model.

[eddyramrod]

Points for realism there!  Don't all BMWs of that age have a cracked windscreen?  On ebay it seems compulsory!

[bunglebus]

2 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Russian

That reminds me, saw this today

How much for a Russian partwork Lɒda?

Twenty pounds. Yeah.

[Split_Pin]

I got one from Eddie for a quid!

[junkyarddog]

46 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I got one from Eddie for a quid!

"You woz robbed M8"

[danthecapriman]

59 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

That reminds me, saw this today

How much for a Russian partwork Lɒda?

Twenty pounds. Yeah.

Those partwork/IXO based Lada’s are pretty nice models. Certainly not £20 nice though!

This one started life as a cop car version, stripped & repainted in authentic Lada paint too.

[flat4alfa]

10 hours ago, bunglebus said:

plastic Playart Commer with a switched electric motor and a little pin that folds down, presumably so it will run along a slot car track

How that has survived, unbroken in a tub of tat I don't know, but it can spend its retirement in safety now.

Well that’s interesting!

Looking at it, the front wheels have steerable mechanism.  But the ‘pin’ does not move the steering.  So is it a latch to lock the steering into one position?  So you could set it to run about in circles - no need for guide track like a Motorific etc

I wondered if there used to be a remote control lead coming out the back of it, but looking at the scale I doubt it

WLTM!  (dibs, pretty please) 

Interesting detail underneath implying this Commer was running either a 3 (or 6) cylinder engine exhaust….  into the differential.   Hey- a Commer TS3 in a Spacevan!  Shirley not

[bunglebus]

5 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

WLTM!  (dibs, pretty please) 

You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands 😂

[Spottedlaurel]

Stuff accumulated over the last week or so:

 

Zakspeed Capri kit and odds and ends with thanks to @bunglebus I may already have another one of the Land Cruiser out of its pack somewhere, but for modest cost cost good to get this one.

Red thing I presume meant to be a Calibra but has lost its rear wing? I think I got these from the charity shop that does 4 for £1, but I don't know where the fourth one has gone.....

Master SL found the Mazda in Sainsbury's in Norwich. He got himeself one plus the 300ZX in the same range, but sadly no sign of the Skyline they also do. Remainder came fromanother Sainsbury's, where they also had Japanese Series Majorettes but (as has happened before) wouldn't sell them to me as the codes didn't scan. It was the end of a long day and I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of a debate about it, but since then I've wondered how do they even take them into stock if the code doesn't work?

Mercifully I had no such issue with these at Morrisons, didn't even need a More card to get them for half price at £7 a pack. The Nissan pickups were the main items of interest, but there are other goods ones in there too like the maroon Volvo and at least being Matchbox there aren't  load of fantasy cars. There were another couple of packs but nothing in them of sufficient interest to me.

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, Spottedlaurel said:

How's the Capri? I checked it had at least all four wheels but that was about it. Cool looking thing the Zakspeed 

[Spottedlaurel]

17 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

How's the Capri? I checked it had at least all four wheels but that was about it. Cool looking thing the Zakspeed 

Good thanks. I think the decals have gone AWOL, but after 40+ years I doubt they'd be much good anyway. Front pillars are slightly bent, but I'm sure can be persuaded back.

Not yet sure what I'm going to do with it, would look good one day alongside the Group 5 Celica racer I did when I was 14: