Shite in Miniature II

[andy18s]

8 hours ago, sierraman said:

Look like the Bulgarian issue ones? 

Yep,there's quite a few kicking around tbh...lol

[quicksilver]

On 6/11/2021 at 12:22 PM, Datsuncog said:

So then - home again, and now that some VERY CROSS PEOPLE have been placated (about real-life buses and coaches, ironically enough) - what came back with me?

Not a lot, really.

 

The open-top Sydney Tour bus will need a bit of love, as its months in the tub have done it no favours.

Ouch.

Argh.

Hopefully this is restorable/ repairable! If nothing else, it could probably be a parts donor for the £2 charged.

As an ABC model the engine detail is tremendous, with sundry opening bits which I would never have expected at this scale.

Will pop it in with your other stuff!

 

Yikes, that's had a tough time of it. Guess I'll have to claim it as shipping damage on the boat from Down Under, but still well worth 2 quid and I'm sure I can fix it. You're so right about the superb detailing on ABC models - I dismantled and repainted one of the closed-top versions about 20 years ago and it took ages thanks to all the intricate little parts, way ahead of Corgi and EFE's offerings of the time.

[sierraman]

54 minutes ago, andy18s said:

Yep,there's quite a few kicking around tbh...lol

Are the Bulgarian Matchboxes still a common find in the shops?

[bunglebus]

Only one arrival today, bit of an oddity as I suspect it's meant for OO gauge railway dioramas

I only got it as it may be a copy of this Matchbox

 

[bunglebus]

I made a bit of progress on the latest Gus's Gulper. Being as I'm trying to recreate a colour trial, I didn't go too mad getting rid of the casting lines, of which there are quite a few on this example

The paint is a brand I've never heard of, and unfortunately comes out like a fire hose. Searching through my jar of spare nozzles netted me one other which fitted, but it was no better, think it's just very thick paint. Thankfully it didn't sag or run, but it's hard getting into the grille etc when it's coming out so fast, I prefer several thin coats to build it up. Also stripped and re-chromed the engine as it had lost a lot of its plating.

So far so good, sanded and painted the tyres to hide the wear, a bit of Molotow on the exhausts, now have to sit on my hands for a while before re-assembly.

I'm also hoping I can remove the yellowing from the glass, I'll find out tomorrow

[andy18s]

No,it's all cheap Chinese stuff or plastic.

Hotwheels and Burago are stocked by a few shops but with the average wage still being low not many young families stick around the smaller towns

Welly are pretty much everywhere but with even they can cost the equivalent of 2hrs pay for some.

This one cost 8 lev/4 Euro

[andy18s]

21 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Are the Bulgarian Matchboxes still a common find in the shops?

By everywhere I mean facebook marketplace, but everyone knows "it's rare and/or wanted by rich Brits" and priced accordingly 

 

[andrew e]

@bunglebus would it pay you to get an airbrush do you reckon? Paint would work out cheaper I reckon? Top job on the gulper 👍

[sierraman]

When did the Bulgarian Matchbox run finish production? 

[bunglebus]

9 minutes ago, andrew e said:

@bunglebus would it pay you to get an airbrush do you reckon? Paint would work out cheaper I reckon? Top job on the gulper 👍

I have got one, just don't really use it. It's a faf setting it all up and cleaning it afterwards, I'm lazy and just reach for an aerosol!

I have used it a couple of times, mainly for experiments with nail varnish

I do have two more Gulpers in the project box, next one will be getting a custom colour and proper detailing I reckon

[bunglebus]

30 minutes ago, sierraman said:

When did the Bulgarian Matchbox run finish production? 

According to Wiki, it hasn't. I have one boxed Bulgarian Matchbox, I'd like more but you obviously have to pay to get them sent over. Part of the T+Cs was they were only to be sold in Bulgaria 

Oh and an unboxed one too - note they use smooth tyres rather than the knoblies on the regular Dune Man/Sand Digger

If you search Matchbox Bulgaria on eBay there are loads but you're looking at £10 a pop+ with the postage

[bunglebus]

Oh and I found out my little plastic J2 is indeed a Matchbox copy by Blue Box

 

[andy18s]

These are up for sale at 500 lev/255 Euro

 

[bunglebus]

Seems a lot when you could buy a chrome Cortina for £15

There are loads with manufacturer logos too

[Datsuncog]

Some more recent-ish arrivals...

Courtesy of @WillCarter, these are some further attempts to right some of the many wrongs of my past (in a very limited way).

Mk1 Cortina is the green version of a blue-grey one I bought on holiday in 1990, and promptly dropped down a set of ornamental stone steps at Powerscourt, much to my chagrin.

I still have my chipped original, but I tossed the box as soon as I got it. Silly me.

One outworking of getting old seems to be that the packaging delivers as much, or possibly even more, of a nostalgia hit as the model within.

This era of Corgi Classics boasted fully transparent boxes with a card insert and background to provide a base to attach the model as well as improving the some structural integrity.

Other than UV sunlight having a tendency to cause yellowing and splitting to the clear plastic, they still look pretty good thirty years later. This one's still in great nick, though. The little streetscape behind reminds me of those paper model railway backgrounds that Peco used to make.

I'm sure I'll bore you all at some point in the future about how Corgi packaging evolved over time... I've a fair few examples of the different boxes, but by no means a complete set.

Also arriving as part of this lot were more Matchbox Dinky models:

The DY-16 model of the '67 Mustang fastback in metallic green is one of my all-time favourites - one of those cars that just seems to look right from every angle.

I've been advised by someone who's driven one that they're really not all that great to pilot, so I'm probably better off with one of these tiny versions than spending my hard-earned on the real thing.

As with the Cortina, this is also one I previously owned new on release in 1990 - but I stupidly threw the box away and then let the paint get chipped and the chrome rubbed away, due to carrying it around in my pocket all the time.

So again, it's a consolidation exercise more than anything else, to have a mint and boxed version along with the others.

The boxes themselves are very nicely done, and clearly the Matchbox design team put a lot of thought into retaining some heritage touches while also making them appealing to modern collectors. Like the contemporary Corgi Classics, the clear packaging around much of the model allowed for close inspection of the front, back, side and top, while the backdrop showed either a sort of soft-focus pastel townscape or a soft-focus motor show scene. Much prominence is given to the Dinky name; not so much to the Matchbox branding.

Next up:

The DY-21 Austin Mini Cooper S was one of the third batch of MB Dinkys, launched in 1991, and I remember buying an issue of Classic & Sportscar magazine with some promotional postcards included as inserts - the Mini was shown alongside the Ferrari Dino (DY-24) and Porsche 356 (DY-25).

I really liked this one at the time, but it was the same price as the others in the range despite being so tiny - so I think I felt it represented poor value for money, and instead bought the reassuringly chunky DY-13 Bentley Continental R with my pocket money.

For reasons that aren't quite clear, the Matchbox Dinky range started to become harder to find around this time, and I can remember fruitlessly trekking around model shops trying to find the latest releases.

I dunno whether they weren't shifting from the shelves, and so local retailers like Leisure World, Stewart Millar and McCulloughs stopped stocking them - or whether there were more fraught things going on behind the scenes with distribution, following the Tyco takeover of Matchbox from Universal in 1992.

I knew from Collectors Gazette that they were still on release, but any which I encountered beyond 91-92 tended to be found in chemist's shops, for some weird reason - Connor's Chemist's in Main St, and Superchem up at Springhill Shopping Centre. Not the full range or anything, just three or four random models at a time. That's where I picked up my Citroen 15CV (DY-22), Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (DY-12), Radio Times Ford E83W van (DY-4) and silver Ford V-8 Pilot (DY-5-B).

Weird.

But I never even saw the 1992 release of the white DY-28 Triumph Stag in real life until some years later, and by then I'd kinda moved up a gear into collecting Minichamps, Trofeu  and Vitesse models, which made the Matchbox Dinkys look kinda clunky and plasticky by comparison.

I also didn't know they'd produced a later 'B' version of the Stag in dark metallic green until I saw Will's example, and I have to say it looks great.

I mean, the more recent Vanguards interpretation of the Stag kinda nails it in terms of proportions and detail, but I still think there's an awful lot of charm to this one.

In the early 1990s, most '1960s classics' models still seemed to lean towards the earlier part of the decade, so one like this from 1968 which was made right through into the 1970s was revelatory. It aligned with the real-life cars that fascinated me, and I dared to dream that one glorious day, we'd see models of Morris Marinas, Austin Allegros and MkIV Cortinas...

Lastly for this group, there's the DY-35 VW Karmann Ghia floppytop:

This one wasn't released until 1995, and to be honest I thought the entire Matchbox Dinky range had been canned by this point.

I never saw one of these on the shelves at the time, and wasn't even aware of its existence until I bought Charlie Mack's big Matchbox Bible a few years back.

But it's a nicely done model, in a lovely colour, and I'm very pleased with it.

I really must get all my Matchbox Dinky stuff pulled together in one place, as they're currently spread over several storage boxes.

Of course, I'm not done quite yet with this range - there's still a few more to find...

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

Oh and I found out my little plastic J2 is indeed a Matchbox copy by Blue Box

Who said it was a copy?  There are many detail differences between the two models

After all the Morris-Commercial J2 with that Pickup body was a real thing

There were also Austin and BMC -badged derivatives too

[bunglebus]

12 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Lastly for this group, there's the DY-35 VW Karmann Ghia floppytop:

That's cool, I had the Beetle but don't recall that one.

I do like the green Mustang too, great colour choice

[bunglebus]

34 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

Who said it was a copy?

Facebook expert*

Looking on Hobby DB, there are several that look very familiar.

[sierraman]

Another Avenue of curiosity fulfilled, I e-mailed Mikro67, they DO still produce the Ford Cortina, they retail for 6 euros each! 

Wonder if they’d do a run of brown Autoshite branded ones?

[bunglebus]

3 hours ago, sierraman said:

Another Avenue of curiosity fulfilled, I e-mailed Mikro67, they DO still produce the Ford Cortina, they retail for 6 euros each! 

Wonder if they’d do a run of brown Autoshite branded ones?

I don't see why not - think there's a minimum run of 100 or so so might be a problem allocating them all. Shite brown with a beige interior? 

[155V6]

6 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I don't see why not - think there's a minimum run of 100 or so so might be a problem allocating them all. Shite brown with a beige interior? 

You'd easily sell those to people on Banger Racing model forums

[junkyarddog]

3 hours ago, sierraman said:

Another Avenue of curiosity fulfilled, I e-mailed Mikro67, they DO still produce the Ford Cortina, they retail for 6 euros each! 

Wonder if they’d do a run of brown Autoshite branded ones?

That does sound kind of appealing.

Would there be enough interest in the general autoshite populus though?

[bunglebus]

You'd be looking at €600 + delivery and any duties. Not sure what other models they make but the minimum 100 doesn't have to all be the same casting, I've seen Celicas and others on eBay

[bunglebus]

I left the Gulper's window unit in a product called Cara White, essentially it's a hydrogen peroxide solution. Several hours in the sun and a small miracle has happened 

 

[sierraman]

26 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

You'd be looking at €600 + delivery and any duties. Not sure what other models they make but the minimum 100 doesn't have to all be the same casting, I've seen Celicas and others on eBay

Guessing they’d retail at £10 each plus postage landed in the U.K.? 

[warch]

19 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Some more recent-ish arrivals...

Awesome, I really liked that Dinky range, early 90s iirc? I didn't know they did a Mustang, that's a super looking model. Predictably I had the Land Rover, in AA yellow. I completely agree about owning cars vicariously through their model counterparts, having had another go in my brother's Series One Landy I think the thing I like most about it is looking at it.

[junkyarddog]

A couple of mildly interesting variations on the Matchbox Ford GT.

Regular Yellow wheels and regular red wheels.

Never seen red ones on this casting before.

3 different colour bases on early superfast. 

Never seen the mustard colour on a base.

As I said,mildly interesting.

Smoll Eddy just yawned when I mentioned it to him. 

[sierraman]

I’ve often wondered how much fun it would have been to have worked at the Hackney factory. To break the monotony you could have done a run of Cortina with pink bases or whatever. 

[AndyW201]

22 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Some more recent-ish arrivals...

Courtesy of @WillCarter, these are some further attempts to right some of the many wrongs of my past (in a very limited way).

Mk1 Cortina is the green version of a blue-grey one I bought on holiday in 1990, and promptly dropped down a set of ornamental stone steps at Powerscourt, much to my chagrin.

I still have my chipped original, but I tossed the box as soon as I got it. Silly me.

One outworking of getting old seems to be that the packaging delivers as much, or possibly even more, of a nostalgia hit as the model within.

This era of Corgi Classics boasted fully transparent boxes with a card insert and background to provide a base to attach the model as well as improving the some structural integrity.

Other than UV sunlight having a tendency to cause yellowing and splitting to the clear plastic, they still look pretty good thirty years later. This one's still in great nick, though. The little streetscape behind reminds me of those paper model railway backgrounds that Peco used to make.

I'm sure I'll bore you all at some point in the future about how Corgi packaging evolved over time... I've a fair few examples of the different boxes, but by no means a complete set.

Also arriving as part of this lot were more Matchbox Dinky models:

The DY-16 model of the '67 Mustang fastback in metallic green is one of my all-time favourites - one of those cars that just seems to look right from every angle.

I've been advised by someone who's driven one that they're really not all that great to pilot, so I'm probably better off with one of these tiny versions than spending my hard-earned on the real thing.

As with the Cortina, this is also one I previously owned new on release in 1990 - but I stupidly threw the box away and then let the paint get chipped and the chrome rubbed away, due to carrying it around in my pocket all the time.

So again, it's a consolidation exercise more than anything else, to have a mint and boxed version along with the others.

The boxes themselves are very nicely done, and clearly the Matchbox design team put a lot of thought into retaining some heritage touches while also making them appealing to modern collectors. Like the contemporary Corgi Classics, the clear packaging around much of the model allowed for close inspection of the front, back, side and top, while the backdrop showed either a sort of soft-focus pastel townscape or a soft-focus motor show scene. Much prominence is given to the Dinky name; not so much to the Matchbox branding.

Next up:

The DY-21 Austin Mini Cooper S was one of the third batch of MB Dinkys, launched in 1991, and I remember buying an issue of Classic & Sportscar magazine with some promotional postcards included as inserts - the Mini was shown alongside the Ferrari Dino (DY-24) and Porsche 356 (DY-25).

I really liked this one at the time, but it was the same price as the others in the range despite being so tiny - so I think I felt it represented poor value for money, and instead bought the reassuringly chunky DY-13 Bentley Continental R with my pocket money.

For reasons that aren't quite clear, the Matchbox Dinky range started to become harder to find around this time, and I can remember fruitlessly trekking around model shops trying to find the latest releases.

I dunno whether they weren't shifting from the shelves, and so local retailers like Leisure World, Stewart Millar and McCulloughs stopped stocking them - or whether there were more fraught things going on behind the scenes with distribution, following the Tyco takeover of Matchbox from Universal in 1992.

I knew from Collectors Gazette that they were still on release, but any which I encountered beyond 91-92 tended to be found in chemist's shops, for some weird reason - Connor's Chemist's in Main St, and Superchem up at Springhill Shopping Centre. Not the full range or anything, just three or four random models at a time. That's where I picked up my Citroen 15CV (DY-22), Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (DY-12), Radio Times Ford E83W van (DY-4) and silver Ford V-8 Pilot (DY-5-B).

Weird.

But I never even saw the 1992 release of the white DY-28 Triumph Stag in real life until some years later, and by then I'd kinda moved up a gear into collecting Minichamps, Trofeu  and Vitesse models, which made the Matchbox Dinkys look kinda clunky and plasticky by comparison.

I also didn't know they'd produced a later 'B' version of the Stag in dark metallic green until I saw Will's example, and I have to say it looks great.

I mean, the more recent Vanguards interpretation of the Stag kinda nails it in terms of proportions and detail, but I still think there's an awful lot of charm to this one.

In the early 1990s, most '1960s classics' models still seemed to lean towards the earlier part of the decade, so one like this from 1968 which was made right through into the 1970s was revelatory. It aligned with the real-life cars that fascinated me, and I dared to dream that one glorious day, we'd see models of Morris Marinas, Austin Allegros and MkIV Cortinas...

Lastly for this group, there's the DY-35 VW Karmann Ghia floppytop:

This one wasn't released until 1995, and to be honest I thought the entire Matchbox Dinky range had been canned by this point.

I never saw one of these on the shelves at the time, and wasn't even aware of its existence until I bought Charlie Mack's big Matchbox Bible a few years back.

But it's a nicely done model, in a lovely colour, and I'm very pleased with it.

I really must get all my Matchbox Dinky stuff pulled together in one place, as they're currently spread over several storage boxes.

Of course, I'm not done quite yet with this range - there's still a few more to find..

Great purchases DC! Dinkies of that era have started to pique my interest lately. I've been having a shift around of the 'main' display cabinet and can't ignore the fact that it's starting to get overrun with Ford and Vauxhall/Opel, I've not really purchased anything BMC/BL/ARG for a while, mainly because you're not really spoiled for choice in 1/43 and even stuff like Vanguards Allegros and Marinas, the castings of which are nigh on 20 years old, are creeping up in price. The Dinky MGB GT, Stag and Mini Cooper can still be got for reasonable money and just about hold their own with more recently made models.

Its stuff like that Dinky range and the introduction of Corgi Classics that really got me into 1/43 stuff, and like a few have mentioned here, for me they were game changers in that they modelled subjects from the lower, cheaper end of the market, cars that at that time could still just about be found on the roads in everyday use.  Seeing the Corgi Classics MK2 Zephyr, MK1 Cortina and Morris Minor for the first time in the massive  Romer Parrish toy shop in Middlesbrough blew my little teenaged mind!

Then, a few years later when I definitely should have been old enough to know better and had progressed on to REAL cars, came the first cars of the Vanguards range, including the Anglia 105E. I was never the same again...

[bunglebus]

38 minutes ago, junkyarddog said:

All my early ones have yellow wheels (and no tyres) and black bases

Early and late Superfast with mint green bases

I don't know why some models get coloured bases when most are black, silver or unpainted, Wildcat dragster has a few different hues

That mint green appears under some of the Ford Pickups too

Trailer caravan gets a nice bit of colour-coding. I've only got one so I don't know if they're all like it

Did someone order a batch of green too many?

Dodge Dragster is as far as I know the casting with the widest range of colours on the base, I have these as well as black