Shite in Miniature II

[Datsuncog]

2 hours ago, Tenmil Socket said:

They gave me the creeps those models for some reason 😆

Did the tyres in the back of the Citreon have labels on like a new tyre?

Yup, the tyres in the back had manufacturer labels on 'em... looked like a nice model hidden under there, I'm just trying to guess what on earth happened... freaky stuff, for sure! But miles better now.

4 hours ago, Crusty Sills said:

Anyone wanting to flood the market with Lledo and other valuable commercial models. 

From this week's Classic Car Weekly. 

Blimey, that's quite a haul... though I can't help but feel a bit sorry for the vendor when he gets his cheque for £8.30 from the auction house, then sees them all down the market at twelve for a pound.

As investments go, he might have done marginally better throwing his cash at some Nigerian princes experiencing technical difficulties with their bank accounts...

[Split_Pin]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/373332345509

Local to me

I need two doors!

[DoctorRetro]

2 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Those slot mags are ace, sauce?

Ebay. They are OK, but the holes are a bit wonky so they don't quite sit on the axles right. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/173542239782

 

[bunglebus]

I thought they might K&R. Look better in your pics than theirs

[flat4alfa]

Anyone also into Woody wagons?

I've two of these, a 'woody' Ford made by SunnySide, bought in a job lot with other models that were damaged in transit, but I bought them to modify into slot cars anyhow.  I thought it was a plastic rear but no, it is diecast after all, making it heavier than expected.

I think it's modelled on a '40 Ford Deluxe 

It's around 1:32 scale

So being realistic, it's surplus; so was going to pop it on the bay of evil but wondered if swaps here were probable.  I quite like it, ok it's recent model and made in China but so what, it looks decent to me.  Wood is best, as the wife says.

[bunglebus]

Got a few woodies but nothing of that scale - Hot Wheels Morris Traveller and the 40 Ford spring to mind

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Dug out a couple of models from my collection earlier. 

The Imp cost £87 back in 1998! Fortunately values haven't declined, but it's interesting just how much was being asked two decades ago. It's mint with original leaflet in the box. Front suspension seems to have dropped, although a bit of rake never did any harm... Fortunately the rear suspension is still spot on, and the mechanism to move the back seat up and down still works perfectly. 

 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I also unearthed my Corgi Citroen DS19 Safari. Like the Imp, the attention to detail is excellent and it has a really weighty feel to it.

I've got the original box for this one too - wish I'd taken more photos now!

 

[bunglebus]

A couple of bits just turned up

First, another Zylmex - D14 Tornado

A Polistil Merc

Lastly the ex-C1am Chinese Hot Wheels Range Rover copy. Original ones get a bit too expensive for me on eBay 

 

[flat4alfa]

Crikey, £87 for a Corgi Rally Imp, that's all of £150 in today's money!

Mind you, back then it was par for the course to blow £87 on useless induction kits for my Alfa 155.  Car long gone: investment fail.

All I can offer is my 99p Dinky Herald bought last Tuesday.  99p back in 1998 was 58p, which might have stretched to a mid-size bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

Complete, so dip and recolour.  But which colour scheme?  Still pondering.

If I'm going to bother with Herald 1200, it's not worth having it look too 'driving school Mumsie'

[bunglebus]

^ those colours, but like this

 

[flat4alfa]

We're gonna need a bigger set of wheels

[Split_Pin]

I do think prices of 50s and 60s Corgi and Dinky have fallen or rather not risen in line with inflation, especially British cars

Still a pretty penny mind but I recall going to Swapmeets in the late 80s /Early 90s and the prices of some boxed or VGC Dinky models were not too shy of £100 . Corgis, as inferred above, a shade less desirable. 

I was and still am lucky enough to have many boxed examples handed down to me by my Dad and Uncles, otherwise I would not have bothered with them.

I suppose those that wanted them at that time were reliving their youth much as many of us 30/40 somethings are now with Superfast, Bburago and Corgi 1/36 cars. Atlas will obviously have had an impact too, they're heaven sent to someone who has longer for the French Dinkys in the 'Toy Cars' book!

[Dick Cheeseburger]

2 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

Crikey, £87 for a Corgi Rally Imp, that's all of £150 in today's money!

To be fair, it's worth £150+ in today's money, so it wasn't such a bad buy. 

[barrett]

2 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

Crikey, £87 for a Corgi Rally Imp, that's all of £150 in today's money!

Mind you, back then it was par for the course to blow £87 on useless induction kits for my Alfa 155.  Car long gone: investment fail.

All I can offer is my 99p Dinky Herald bought last Tuesday.  99p back in 1998 was 58p, which might have stretched to a mid-size bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

Complete, so dip and recolour.  But which colour scheme?  Still pondering.

If I'm going to bother with Herald 1200, it's not worth having it look too 'driving school Mumsie'

Feel free to make it into a replica of my old car, something I'd like to do but have neither the skill nor inclination. You can even buy 1/43 GT6 rims on ebay for it!

 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

16 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I do think prices of 50s and 60s Corgi and Dinky have fallen or rather not risen in line with inflation, especially British cars

Still a pretty penny mind but I recall going to Swapmeets in the late 80s /Early 90s and the prices of some boxed or VGC Dinky models were not too shy of £100 . Corgis, as inferred above, a shade less desirable. 

I was and still am lucky enough to have many boxed examples handed down to me by my Dad and Uncles, otherwise I would not have bothered with them.

I suppose those that wanted them at that time were reliving their youth much as many of us 30/40 somethings are now with Superfast, Bburago and Corgi 1/36 cars. Atlas will obviously have had an impact too, they're heaven sent to someone who has longer for the French Dinkys in the 'Toy Cars' book!

Interesting thoughts, and something I've been thinking about. I'm wondering if my 1960s Dinkys and Corgis values will start to fall in coming years as the generation that payed top dollar for them die off? I have held onto mine as they pique my own interest, and I thought they'd be a good nest egg to pass onto my lad. 

Now I'm not so sure...

[flat4alfa]

No, I don't think they will either, tbh.

The word on the street is Lledo Days Gone.  'Roll up, roll up!'  😉

[Dick Cheeseburger]

1 hour ago, flat4alfa said:

No, I don't think they will either, tbh.

The word on the street is Lledo Days Gone.  'Roll up, roll up!'  😉

I sold some m&b Lledo and Models of Yesteryear when we were clearing a load of crap doing car boot sales a couple of years ago. They sold for peanuts, and even then it was a bit of a struggle getting shot of them. 

[sierraman]

eBay has probably made a dent on this, in 1998 obviously there was none of this so if you wanted a Corgi Imp you’d head for a Swapmeet and you’d pretty much like it or lump it as you’d probably not come across one again for some time. Maybe this coupled with the obsession in the early 90’s with antiques and ‘collectors items’ and the principle anything was collectible probably fuelled prices. Now of course you’d search on eBay and there be a hundred examples for sale. 

I always found the mint and boxed Dinkies from the 50’s and 60’s quite tragic, never played with and never enjoyed, now 50 years later less a toy more a commodity. There’s something heartwarming about finding a battered Corgi Kojak police car, the suspension sagging and the paint chipped, you can see it’s been played with and enjoyed forming a happy warm memory perhaps for someone. 

[C1am]

Auction lot - listing only has this poor quality photo. Anything worth having ?

[bunglebus]

34 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

I sold some m&b Lledo and Models of Yesteryear when we were clearing a load of crap doing car boot sales a couple of years ago. They sold for peanuts, and even then it was a bit of a struggle getting shot of them. 

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. No-one has fond memories of pushing a MOY 1910 DeDion Bouton along their nan's hall when they were 7

[bunglebus]

6 minutes ago, C1am said:

Auction lot - listing only has this poor quality photo. Anything worth having ?

I see a red 3 series cabrio, countach, pink cadillac, XR3i cab, RS200. Not sure on the others but all boxed Matchbox fetch fairly healthy prices

[Split_Pin]

34 minutes ago, sierraman said:

eBay has probably made a dent on this, in 1998 obviously there was none of this so if you wanted a Corgi Imp you’d head for a Swapmeet and you’d pretty much like it or lump it as you’d probably not come across one again for some time. Maybe this coupled with the obsession in the early 90’s with antiques and ‘collectors items’ and the principle anything was collectible probably fuelled prices. Now of course you’d search on eBay and there be a hundred examples for sale. 

I always found the mint and boxed Dinkies from the 50’s and 60’s quite tragic, never played with and never enjoyed, now 50 years later less a toy more a commodity. There’s something heartwarming about finding a battered Corgi Kojak police car, the suspension sagging and the paint chipped, you can see it’s been played with and enjoyed forming a happy warm memory perhaps for someone. 

Agreed. I have a sort of subliminal line drawn in my head where I assess the % paint left on a potential restoration candidate before either deciding to proceed or leave it to tell it's story. 

It's around 65% I'd say. 

This one is on the cusp:

I have some nice Ford Black spray paint in the garage and the glass and wheels are in good condition. But sometimes a restoration sterilises a diecast for me.

[flat4alfa]

On 8/13/2020 at 10:59 PM, junkyarddog said:

There is two different versions, one with an engine and one without.

Sleep is no longer deprived !

The elusive c.1974 Matchbox SuperKings K-6/11 Pick-Up Truck with the exposed low-mpg motor has been found .....for 99p !

But what's that in the rear deck?  That's not the Hondarora motorcycle from the K-6 Motor-Cycle Transporter 'set'...

Quite right, no it's not.  It's a Hot Wheels Zowie 'Good Knight' from c.1972.  It cost all of £2 in the same batch, and suits the fantasy look?

Pick-Up is all complete and I do have a spare air intake as this one has little chunk out of it - but might leave it after all after tidying it with my dear friend the fake Dremmel.

Body?  It's probably beyond the 'cusp' as mentioned above, so paint it best effort to colour-match the little Zowie, I wonder?  Did they ever do the K-6 Motorcycle Transporter in red?  The K-11 Wrecker, yes they did, but not the... never mind I'll go now.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

1 hour ago, sierraman said:

eBay has probably made a dent on this, in 1998 obviously there was none of this so if you wanted a Corgi Imp you’d head for a Swapmeet and you’d pretty much like it or lump it as you’d probably not come across one again for some time. Maybe this coupled with the obsession in the early 90’s with antiques and ‘collectors items’ and the principle anything was collectible probably fuelled prices. Now of course you’d search on eBay and there be a hundred examples for sale. 

I always found the mint and boxed Dinkies from the 50’s and 60’s quite tragic, never played with and never enjoyed, now 50 years later less a toy more a commodity. There’s something heartwarming about finding a battered Corgi Kojak police car, the suspension sagging and the paint chipped, you can see it’s been played with and enjoyed forming a happy warm memory perhaps for someone. 

True that. Certainly a sellers market back then. I bought several models from a regular couple at a local stockmeet who always sourced immaculate 60s Dinkys and Corgis. They were very good at finding the rarer stuff but their prices were always top end. This is Cornwall though, and as you mentioned, there were few alternatives at the time. I often eyed up their as-new Dinky Stripey the magic Mini - I'm sure it was approaching £100 at the time. £150+ to source one in the same condition now, but I guess the money in the bank would have appreciated slightly more. 

Where's the enjoyment in that though ?

I get what you mean about battered models too. Ive collected several which our lad plays with, and when he crashes them, it doesn't matter. He loves playing with them and we love joining in with him. I much prefer bashed up old models as opposed to plastic Chinese modern rubbish. 

I enjoy having models at both ends of the condition scale in the collection. 

 

[flat4alfa]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

There’s something heartwarming about finding a battered Corgi Kojak police car, the suspension sagging and the paint chipped, you can see it’s been played with and then thrown violently at the coving after the lady of the house had a melt-down because she'd had enough of seeing Corgi Kojaks in various colour variations cluttering the place

EFA

[FakeConcern]

Just over a year ago I asked on this thread what some of the cars in a print were and not only were they all worked out, but the original artist was as well! Fantastic detective work!

(see here)

https://autoshite.com/topic/10758-shite-in-miniature-ii/page/419/?tab=comments#comment-1881868

This is the print...

We had thought that a fun year of car boot sale hunting was on the cards, but events meant that a not quite so fun year of ebay/FB Marketplace hunting actually took place. Obviously we wanted all the cars we didn't have already as cheap as could be so it meant a lot of being outbid at the last moment and also paying silly money for some along with dealing with FB marketplace twats haha..

Here they are aranged as per the print, but not in final form as the blue dinky caravan is being replaced by one closer in olour to the original

The tiny models caused the most trouble as I only found one seller with the Micro Machines Ford hotrod (he actually had 3 of them) and it was very hard to get him to sell them to me and then didn't post it until a week after I'd paid well over the odds for it..

The second problem was the Wiking HO scale caravan which turned out to be a Wiking OO scale caravan haha (see below)

It did come as part of a really rather lovely set with a Chevrolet Malibu (?) an Opel Rekord and another even smaller caravan!

So now we are thinking about how to display the whole lot somewhere (probably not the summer house where the idea originated)

See summer house below...

https://autoshite.com/topic/20735-doesnt-fit-anywhere-else-shite-thread/page/4/

I'll update this when it's finished properly...

[Split_Pin]

Absolutely brilliant work in finding all those cars, some even look in similar condition!

[Datsuncog]

I think really good original examples of toys will always fetch decent coin, as they do tug on the emotions in a way Days Gone or any of those made-to-be-collectables just can't manage.

Since I thinned down my  previous 'buy everything' collection, it came as a genuine surprise to find that 1/36 Corgi was the thing that really does it for me. Of course, it would have probably been better if I'd found that out before I sold nearly all of them... but hey, better late than never?

I've also realised that the boxes and packaging are nearly as important to me as the models themselves, for that nostalgia buzz - especially the early 80s yellow and black window boxes. One glance and I'm transported back to the toy aisle in Stewarts c.1983, gazing at the shelves laden with R5 Turbos and Escort panda cars, sick with desire... I've only got two boxed from that era, but there's definitely something there that's very special to me. (One of them's the ex- @Dick Longbridge FX4 taxi, and it's really lovely.)

I have heard that older pre-war Dinkys are fetching less at auction these days, and that's indeed probably a mix of fewer people around who have that nostalgia tug, plus more models coming back into circulation as collections are broken up for whatever reason - but I think it's also because the crazy headline prices aren't being seen as often whenever two collectors slug it out for a particular rarity.

Ebay has deffo levelled the field a bit, as already mentioned - twenty five years ago, my choice was either to buy a slightly shabby Whizzwheels Marina Coupe for £8, or wait a whole year until the next model fair to see if a better one came along. Now, of course, there's dozens of examples available at a click - some less realistically priced than others, but 'twas ever thus...

I don't think decent, honest examples of the 50s, 60s and 70s stuff are likely to lose their values anytime soon - I mean, time will tell, but the pre-war diecast stuff that used to fetch nutso prices are kinda crude, and I've never been able to really gel with them. Whereas the more recent stuff has a huge amount of charm in the details and packaging, and I think that'll continue to draw in new, younger collectors. While reproduction packaging and restoration parts makes it possible to build a displayable collection for less, true originals will always attract a premium!

I reckon the secret is to buy what you enjoy, not just as an investment. If you can't help but smile when you cast your eye over your collection,  you're probably doing it right.

[Noel Tidybeard]

On 11/11/2020 at 09:05, eddyramrod said:

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!  I was watching that with intent!

i got out biddeded in the end and i weren' going too high on one with paint damage